FIPP's Alastair Lewis Decodes Global Trends Driving Publisher Growth In 2024

Touching the broad strokes of ‘streams that will fuel growth for magazine publishers’, Alastair Lewis, Interim Managing Director, FIPP, and Owner, Quested Consulting spoke about how the way we work, the way we communicate and the topics we talk about have changed over the years, especially at FIPP. “Whether it's content on our website and newsletters or the annual congress, our pop-up events, the training we deliver and the consulting we provide, FIPP strives to help improve outcomes for publishers the world over to showcase best practices and to open doors and make introductions. I believe that is key,” said Lewis.

Currently, Lewis is engaged in working on a plan with a group of other associations and national bodies to put in place a proposal to represent a coalition of publishers from across the world with AI platforms. “And I believe that for FIPP to be involved in leading that discussion, in bringing together publishers to represent and to be able to sit at the table with some of those large AI platforms is a really important part of the role that FIT plays for our members. Several of our larger members, like Axel Springer, the FT and others, are well-placed to make their own deals. And you will have read about and seen those happening and they will continue to happen over the next few months.”

“But we believe we should be working collectively to ensure that the larger majority of smaller and independent publishers don't miss out on the opportunity to sit at the table with the likes of OpenAI, Google, etc. So do come and find me later and have a conversation about that if you're interested to find out a bit more,” he added.

The Growth Drivers

For Lewis, the five streams that he believes will drive growth in the publishing industry and for its stakeholders include, “Being audience-first. There is nothing more important for a publisher's growth in 2024 than taking an audience or a user based approach to everything that you do, whether that's in print or in digital or mobile through live events or any other platform. Knowing your audience, understanding your users, your readers, your visitors, is absolutely key to building products that work and deliver value for the reader and for you as a publisher,” he said.

Gone are the days when publishers can rely upon brand reputation or even just mass numbers to guarantee success. Rather they need to know our users and be able to deliver a value proposition that matches that need. And that means to have a direct relationship, whether that's through registration, first party data gathering, subscription, e-commerce and affiliate revenues.

“We need to know more about our users. The more we know about our users, the better. And of course, I could have showcased all sorts of really fantastic examples that we're seeing around the world of ways that publishers are building subscriptions, particularly in registrations, and we're going to see more of those throughout the day today,” he added.

The second of the key global trends that Lewis said were driving publisher growth is on diversifying your revenues.

“We're beyond experimenting with new revenue streams now. I believe it's a prerequisite for publisher growth that any successful product will have a variety of revenue streams that help deliver overall profit. Again, whether that's print, digital or a combination of both, we're seeing plenty of examples of publishers who are growing revenues in subscriptions alongside advertising, e-commerce, and affiliate revenues alongside circulation and many who are finding new ways to license both their brands and their content in novel ways,” he said.

Lewis illustrated this point by showcasing Time Magazine as an example of diversifying revenue streams. “Time is one of the oldest and best known, best-established media brands in the world.It has an audience of over 100 million people across its platform and it continues to blaze a trail in developing new ways to remain relevant, engage its audience and drive revenues. Now, you may remember a couple of years ago, Time was bought by Mark Benioff at Salesforce. And there's someone who knows something about the value of customer data.”

“The third of the key global trends that I wanted to pick is ‘leaning into AI’. Of course, I could spend the rest of the day talking about AI and we all could spend the rest of the day talking about AI, the potential threats, the issues, the problems, as well as the many huge benefits and opportunities that we as publishers face,” he said

“You need to all get involved and understand how you can be protecting your IP and really making the most of this. And as well as the questions around IP and the threat to SEO-based audience building, there are of course myriad opportunities for publishers,” added Lewis.

“And we need to be leaning into those as well. Whether that's finding tools that help your newsroom to better identify your audience types or the kinds of articles that are most likely to convert subscribers, or using machine learning tools to really dive into first-party data to enable greater and deeper targeting of advertisers. You need to get into this technology, and really understand how it can drive your business forward.”

According to Lewis, one of the great advantages of AI is actually in many cases it can give a real step up to smaller businesses and to get onto a level playing field that other technologies haven't been able to.

He then went on to discuss the fourth key to driving growth: looking for global opportunities. “You might well expect me, as the head of an organisation that works to help publishers build global businesses, to say that we should look for global growth opportunities, but I really believe global is back. We've already discussed how this conference is back. Global opportunities and the concept of working outside of your own market is really something that we're seeing tremendous growth in this year.”

“Many of the brands and businesses in this room were established via joint venture partnerships, and licensing agreements. But we have had a period of hiatus over the last few years, as media owners have been looking to really establish their home models, if you like. But already this year, we've welcomed several new members who are all looking to expand their horizons globally,” added Lewis.

The final of my key trends that Lewis spoke about is ESG (Environmental Sustainability and Governance). “It's a broad theme that covers much more than just making sure you're sourcing paper from sustainable mills or tracking the carbon footprint of your distribution chain. It's not a box-ticking exercise or a nice to-do anymore. These issues need to be baked into your businesses, and it needs to be an absolute priority from the top down.”

We're seeing that the publishers with the best growth are building these into all aspects of their businesses and cascading them through the business accordingly. “

*The speaker was present at an industry event