Highlights from WAN-IFRA's latest World Press Trends 2023-2024 Report

Amidst a climate of geopolitical unrest, evolving dynamics with tech platforms, and the challenges presented by generative AI, the latest WAN-IFRA study reveals a surprisingly positive outlook among news publishers for the upcoming year and beyond.

The World Press Trends Outlook 2023-2024 report indicates that a slight majority of the news executives polled (55%) are optimistic about the forthcoming 12 months. This sentiment of hopefulness modestly increases when considering the longer term, with nearly 60% (58%) of respondents expressing confidence in their organization’s future over the next three years.

This represents a notable shift in attitude from the previous year, during which a majority of publishers expressed a gloomy outlook for the imminent future, according to WAN-IFRA.

“Many publishers we talk to are clearly concerned about the ongoing challenges to the industry and their businesses – speed of transformation and innovation, diversifying their revenue streams, securing a sustainable business model, better understanding and engagement of their audiences and more…But there also has clearly been great progress on all those fronts, and others, in the last years to bring this level of optimism. And, certainly, this varies from region to region, market to market and publisher to publisher.” - Dean Roper, Director of Insights and Editor-in-Chief at WAN-IFRA.

The report from WAN-IFRA highlights several key insights, including:

• Expected growth in revenue: Publishers are anticipating a notable increase in their revenues, forecasting a 15.2% growth for 2023 and nearly 19% for 2024. This optimism is largely attributed to the fruitful outcomes of diversifying revenue sources and continued investment in new financial avenues.
• Dominance of advertising revenue: Advertising remains the primary revenue source for publishers, making up almost half (43%) of the projected income over the coming year, while income from readers accounts for just over a third.
• Print’s sustained importance: Despite the digital shift, print mediums, through advertising and circulation, are still expected to contribute to over half (57%) of the publishers’ total revenue.
• Investment focus on AI: An overwhelming majority of publishers (87%) have identified AI and automation as their top investment priority for the next year, with data analytics and intelligence following closely at 86%.

The “World Press Trends Outlook 2023-2024,” is available for its members to download for free here.