UK Digital Publishing Subscriptions Niche Audiences And High ARPU Opportunity

The 20,000 Foot View:  The current post-social media landscape has facilitated unprecedented global distribution of news while irrevocably shifting their value proposition. UK news entities have begun to discover that they are not only competing against each other. Today, they compete with a variety of content forms, i.e. music, video and games, each progressively saturating their audiences’ daily attention limit. Notwithstanding that some of their distribution partners – namely Google and Facebook – feel like competitors too. Such an ecosystem is currently unfavourable to news publishing, delivering lower numbers of paying audiences in comparison to other formats. However, developments in consumers’ consumption behaviour and the adoption of voice technology has begun to open up new fronts as more entities pivot toward digital monetisation of news services.

Key Findings

• MIDiA’s digital            share model projects the UK            spend on monthly subscriptions in            was            million
• Only            of            UK population pay a monthly            for an online news service
• Only            of            Consumers have three or more            subscriptions
• Consumers spend            average            on a news subscription,            is higher than both music            video           
• News publishing            for just            of total UK            on monthly subscriptions
• News has            a high ARPU, but niche            business
           of UK consumers share articles on social media

Companies and brands mentioned: Amazon, Apple, Bauer Media, Condé Nast UK, The Economist, Daily Mail Group, Dennis Publishing, Facebook, Financial Times, Google, The Guardian, Hearst UK, Immediate Media, King, News UK, Netflix, New York Times, Supercell, The Telegraph Group, Time Inc., Trinity Mirror, Washington Post, Zynga