The news: USA Today announced it will be shifting to a subscription model for many of its stories, the last major national news outlet to make the change. According to the publisher, exclusive investigations, visual explainers, some news analysis, and “immersive storytelling” will go behind the paywall, while the rest will remain free to read.
What this means: It’s a necessary survival move on USA Today’s part.
- Ad-supported news has become less and less viable over the years: Total newspaper ad spending has been in decline for years, and though digital newspaper ad spending has managed to grow, we predict it will barely scrape by with single-percentage growth over the next few years.
- With Chrome set to deprecate its third-party cookies by 2023, publishers’ digital ad revenues will likely suffer even more.
- But it’s not all bad for the publisher: USA Today’s subscription offering enters the market at a time when readers are willing to pay for news.
Key stat: While ad revenues drop, we forecast US digital newspaper subscription revenues will cross the $1 billion mark this year, hitting $1.12 billion. By 2024, we expect that to grow to $1.53 billion, split among 25.7 million total subscriptions.