The latest Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte Digital Publishers’ Revenue Index report shows that UK publisher revenue from display advertising continued to decline in the first quarter of 2024. Total revenue from this category – amongst the 13 publishers surveyed – was £53.5m, down 13.1% on the previous year.
While this of course spells bad news for more traditional advertising, digital revenue overall was found to have enjoyed a small yr-on-yr increase, up 0.7% on the same period in 2023.
Subscriptions increased by 4.2% to £47.1 million, or 35% of total revenue. Digital audio and sponsorship revenues also saw yr-on-yr growth at 13.8% and 10.9% respectively, while video declined by 7.4%. Miscellaneous revenues, which include first-party data monetisation, also saw significant growth of 57.6%.
An interesting trend emerges when reviewing the Moving Annual Target (MAT) figures up to March 2024, where audio revenue shows a significant increase of 131.4%, far higher than the yr-on-yr comparison from Q1 2023 and Q1 2024. This suggests more publishers offered audio as the year progressed, or that they’ve been able to draw additional value from the offering over time.
Richard Reeves, Managing Director at AOP, said: “Display advertising and subscriptions are closing in on taking an equal share of digital publishers’ revenue, which is welcome news for an industry that is too often buffeted by the storms in ad-land. Meanwhile, though still a modest share of total revenue, audio’s ongoing growth is fascinating to track. Should this trend continue, we may see audio revenue overtake video, which I doubt many would have predicted this time last year.”
You can find out more about the Association of Online Publishers and the DPRI report here.