Warc: News media struggles as brands favour softer content
Globally, newsbrand ad spend is forecast to fall to $32.3bn this year, a 33.1% decrease from 2019, as hard news stories – from trade wars to armed conflicts – draw audiences but not ad dollars.
Warc research shows that globally, newsbrand ad spend is forecast to fall to $32.3bn this year, a 33.1% decrease from 2019, as hard news stories – from trade wars to armed conflicts – draw audiences but not ad dollars. (Image supplied)
The advertising industry has a breaking news problem, says the Warc’s Global Advertising Trends report, adding that newsbrand ad spend is forecast to remain flat through 2026.
Magazine brands are not better off with spend is forecast at $3.7bn in 2025, a 38.6% slump since 2019.
Alongside content and safety concerns, brands are favouring global digital platforms like Google and Meta for targeted, scalable ads.
Future growth hinges on first-party data, trusted environments, and revenue diversification beyond ads - such as subscriptions and direct consumer relationships.
Warc’s latest Global Ad Trends report examines the shift in advertising spend from professionally produced content to user-generated content (UGC) and ‘creator-journalists’ willing to operate within digital platform ecosystems.
It explores how news publishers are tackling the decline in ad spend and how they plan to better demonstrate the role of professional journalism on advertising effectiveness.
“Brands have become increasingly squeamish about hard news content,” says Alex Brownsell, head of content, Warc Media.
“Keyword blocking hinders the ability of publishers to monetise newsworthy moments, while ad investment is increasingly shifting from professional journalism to ‘creator-journalists’.
“In this global ad trends report, we look at where the news media ad dollars are being allocated and what newsbrands are doing to combat these losses and win back advertisers.”
High audience interest, low ad spend
Ad spend on news content is falling across the board.
Despite high audience interest, serious news stories are frequently demonetised due to keyword blocklists deployed by brands concerned by reputational risk.
As brands avoid placing ads alongside content deemed controversial or distressing, they are favouring softer content like sport and lifestyle over “hard” news.
Only 3.7% (£177m) of total UK TV ad spend was allocated to news programming in 2024, per Nielsen.
In the US, pharma brands have become increasingly integral for news broadcasters, accounting for 12% of national TV ad sales.
This evokes longstanding questions about the value of news as a content category and whether brands should focus agnostically on targeting audiences.
User-generated content set to overtake professional media
The difficulties facing news media come at a time when advertisers increasingly favour user-generated content (UGC) from influencers and creators, which offer low production costs, direct audience engagement, and alignment with platform algorithms.
Traditional media, which invests upfront in journalism and operates under stricter content standards and to tighter regulations, has struggled to compete.
This shift is particularly damaging to the ad-funded news industry, which has long warned that shrinking investment in professional journalism risks a decline in civic literacy and weaker defences against disinformation.
By next year, professionally produced content is forecast to account for less than half of content-driven ad spend, according to GroupM.
Platforms like TikTok and podcasts are fuelling the rise of creator-journalists, as is the rise of AI-generated content, which also accelerates this trend.
Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president, business intelligence, GroupM, says: “As spend from the long tail of advertisers continues to outpace growth from the top 200, UGC is likely to dominate even more.”
Tech, healthcare and DTC brands drive digital spend shift
Traditionally, the biggest business sectors advertising in US news media included automotive, retail, finance, and telecoms.
With a broad reach and significant budgets, they relied heavily on print and local news to promote products and services at scale.
Over time, however, this mix has shifted.
Automotive and retail spend moved toward digital and performance-based marketing.
As news publishers adapt, they are increasingly targeting tech, healthcare and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands and niche B2B advertisers seeking trusted environments.
Smartphones, social media, and personalised content have made digital news more convenient and appealing, especially for younger audiences.
Over the past decade, online news consumption has surged in the UK and US, widening the gap with offline formats.
This year online consumption is forecast to command nearly half an hour more usage than offline in the UK, while the gap is estimated at 16 minutes in the US.
According to pollster Gallup, news media now ranks among the least trusted institutions in the US, with only 34% expressing confidence.
India’s news sector continues to buck the global trend, with print media maintaining a dominant position despite widespread digital disruption elsewhere.
It has established itself as the largest market for print media globally - despite urban audiences increasingly shifting towards digital platforms - with year-on-year growth of 6% in newsbrand ad spend.
Newsbrands invest in tech, AI, and embrace multiplatform strategies to win back advertisers
News brands have responded to the changing market by investing in technology, developing plans for AI, and building out multiplatform strategies to offer brands and agencies a cohesive proposition.
To further allay advertiser concerns around brand safety, publishers like Reach and News UK have developed in-house tech solutions to avoid inappropriate blocking.
CNN has developed a neuro-linguistic AI tool that analyses context across text, audio, video, and galleries to assess brand suitability.
Media agencies are also evolving their approach.
Some have introduced new measures like “quality CPM” (qCPM) in an effort to better reflect the effectiveness of campaigns placed against professionally produced journalism.
A recent Future of News survey of EMEA executives by agency group Stagwell, found that 85% believe advertising on news media is a good investment.
Trusted news content is also a key factor in ad effectiveness, according to 2023 research by Newsworks and Peter Field: campaigns placed in trusted news environments saw significantly stronger business outcomes, including an 88% uplift in profit growth between 2018 and 2022.
Read a complimentary sample report of WARC’s Global Ad Trends - Advertising’s breaking news problem.
Warc Media subscribers can read the report in full.
A Warc podcast discussing the findings outlined in the report will be available from early May.
Global Ad Trends, part of Warc Media, is a quarterly report which draws on Warc’s dataset of advertising and media intelligence to take a holistic view on current industry developments.