By BestMediaInfo Bureau

Online news subscriptions generated Rs 200 crore from 1.7 million paid subscriptions in 2023, primarily driven by premium and exclusive content, as per the latest EY-FICCI report on M&E industry. The report further stated that the online news platform generated Rs 1,900 crore from ad revenue.

Newspaper digital products will increasingly go behind paywalls for exclusive content, custom knowledge, and passion content. Therefore, EY expects news and related products to generate subscription revenues of Rs 390 crore by 2026, which could increase to over Rs 700 crore through intelligent bundling.

In 2023, Comscore data indicates that online news had a reach of 456 million (over 80% consumed news on their mobile phones) as compared to 574 million smartphones in India.

According to the EY estimates, the reach of online news will grow to over 508 million by 2026.

The digital news platforms of newspaper companies generated less than Rs 1000 crore in ad revenue, as per the report.

“Content distribution of digital news from social media was affected by the shutdown of Insta articles feature by Meta, leading to a potential dip in approximately 50% online traffic to news publishers’ platforms. Frequent changes to algorithms used by large platforms resulted in news publishers generating lower ad CPMs, forcing them to rely more on direct deals,” it added.

However, both digital CPMs and views are on a downward trend, posing challenges in maintaining rates, stated the report.

Read Full Story https://bestmediainfo.com/2024/03/online-news-generates-rs-200-crore-from-subscriptions-and-rs-1900-crore-from-ads-in-2023