WAN-IFRA World Press Trends Outlook 2025

For the first time ever, print and advertising revenues now account for less than half of total revenues for news publishers, according to the newly released WAN-IFRA World Press Trends Outlook report 2024-2025.

Full report paywalled for WAN-IFRA members only - we'll do a teardown in next week's newsletter.

A few key points from the report:

* Events continue to play an important role for publishers looking to diversify their revenues. 29% of WAN-IFRA respondents cite events (in-person and online) as a significant additional revenue stream.

* Grant funding has become an important (though still relatively small) source of revenue after events for the second year running. Many publishers are also generating significant income from business services.

* Publishers’ efforts to build meaningful revenue from various forms of membership offerings are bearing fruit, with 13% of respondents saying that this is now an important source of revenue for them (up from 5% last year).

* Rising Editorial Costs: Editorial budgets have grown to nearly 37%, reflecting the need for unique, high-quality content. Conversely, print production costs have decreased slightly due to reductions in print runs and frequency.

* Digital advertising revenue is increasing but remains insufficient to offset the steeper declines in print advertising. Platform partnerships are evolving, but their contribution to revenue has dropped from 15% to 12% YoY.

* While print remains resilient in certain markets like Asia, it is declining significantly in regions like Europe and the Americas.