Digital Publishers Prioritising Business Fundamentals as ESG Efforts Wane, Reveals AOP Survey
Published: 18 Feb 2025
Readership growth is the top priority for digital publishers, which many plan to achieve through increased content output
London, UK, 18th February 2025: The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) has released the ‘Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2025’ report, summarising findings from its annual survey of digital publishers and solutions providers. The report shows a strong emphasis on readership and revenue growth, gradual relaxation around AI, and a de-prioritisation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.
The survey, conducted by AOP and sponsored by The Trade Desk, was completed by 120 participants across digital publishing and solutions providers, mostly from senior positions, between December 2024 and January 2025. When solutions providers responded to a question, they gave answers they believed reflected their publisher clients’ attitudes and priorities.
Strategic priorities
When publishers were asked about which of their strategic priorities are most important, “growing our readership” was number one, with 85% agreeing or strongly agreeing; followed by “developing new revenue streams through product innovation” at 80%; and increasing advertising revenues at 79%. Solutions providers’ responses returned the same top three.
Top priorities from last year’s survey that fell substantially were “data privacy and compliance”, “recruiting and retaining talent”, and “ensuring a diverse and inclusive workforce” — suggesting the hard day-to-day of business is currently top of mind.
Revenue growth
Drilling deeper into how publishers plan to grow their revenues, 66% agreed or strongly agreed that increasing revenues from advertisers — such as through sharing audience insights — described their approach. Complementing this approach were increased content output (52%) and changing the nature of this output to attract more readers/viewers (40%). In short, publishers want to improve the content-to-readership-to-revenue funnel.
The introduction of subscription and “freemium” models were each chosen by around a third (34% and 32%) of publishers as their approach to revenue growth, though with half of respondents seeing subscriptions as having the most growth potential, these comparatively low numbers are likely because many have already introduced such models. Branded content and first-party data sales are also seen as having high growth potential, with both selected by 45% of respondents.
Data and identifiers
Looking at data and identifiers, first-party data scored 4.2 out of 5 as a commercial focus, while zero-party data scored 2.8, suggesting that the latter is a relatively untapped resource. Momentum is also shifting towards new identity solutions, with 58% of respondents stating they are either trailing or have implemented new identity solutions and are seeing benefits. 54% also strongly disagreed when asked if they would return to using cookies, suggesting a decisive shift away from the technology amidst ongoing confusion around Google’s strategy.
AI exploration and policies
Attitudes towards AI has softened in both enthusiasm and fear, with around the same proportion of publishers exploring generative AI efficiencies as last year (from 76% to 77%), while the exploration of AI product innovations fell slightly (70% to 63%), as did AI training and policy development (55% to 47%). A notable change is that last year around a quarter (26%) of respondents prohibited generative AI, while only around a tenth (11%) do today.
ESG and DE&I
Finally, ESG priorities saw a precipitous decline across the board. ESG’s importance to employees fell from 70% to 51%; importance to investors from 51% to 44%; importance to business values from 62% to 44%, and importance to advertisers from 58% to 39%. Focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) saw more positive responses, with 37% feeling they have an effective DE&I strategy versus 26% last year, while the number that felt there was room for improvement fell from 48% last year to 36% today.
“Readers are the wellspring from which all other revenues flow, so it’s no surprise to see publishers prioritise growth in this area,” said Richard Reeves, Managing Director at AOP. “Going back to the basics of building an audience and effectively monetising this audience is the key to survival in an era of endless distraction. However, strengthening publishing fundamentals must not come at the cost of progress towards a fairer, more sustainable, and equitable industry, so I hope the waning ESG focus in this year’s survey is a blip in the data and not a trend.”
“This survey offers an unrivalled cross-section of the UK digital publishing industry, and it was a pleasure to partner with AOP to gather this year’s responses,” said Theo Luke, Senior Director Inventory Development at The Trade Desk. “The industry has clearly found effective solutions to address the frustrations caused by shifting third-party cookie policies, with growing numbers of publishers adopting new identity tools and already seeing the benefits. By using alternative identifiers, online outlets are laying the foundations for greater revenues, improved accuracy for advertisers, and a better, more streamlined experience for audiences.
ENDS
About the ‘Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2025’ survey
This research, carried out between December 2024 and January 2025, surveyed 120 stakeholders in the publishing industry, 77.5% of whom were from publishers and 22.5% from organisations providing solutions to the publishing sector. Its intention was to capture how digital publishing companies in the UK are responding to current industry challenges.
About Association of Online Publishers
Association of Online Publishers (AOP) is an industry body representing digital publishing companies that create original, branded, quality content. AOP champions the interests of media owners from diverse backgrounds including newspaper and magazine publishing, TV and radio broadcasting, and pure online media. For more information, please visit
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