Digiday+ Research News Subscription Index 2024: Washington Post, Vox shift their strategies

The publishing industry faced volatile times throughout most of 2024. The L.A. Times, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post all laid off staff in the last year. Along with those layoffs, publishers have also been hit by major changes within the advertising industry as a result of Google’s revision to its cookie deprecation plan. Many publishers were prepared to work around Google’s original plan to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome by investing in alternative IDs and building up their own first-party data stores. Now, some publishers have had to reevaluate their ad strategies significantly.

Additionally, many publishers rely on subscriptions as a main revenue stream. However, some advertisers have been “news avoidant” due to the upcoming U.S. presidential election and overseas wars and conflicts making headlines.

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