The increase in quarterly revenue for B2B publishers was principally driven by strong growth in sponsorship and subscriptions, which, compared to Q3 2015, have grown by 47% and 28% respectively.
On a 12-month rolling basis to September 2016, total DPRI revenues for B2B and B2C publishers who responded to the survey grew by 2.0% to £306.1m, compared to the 12-month period ending September 2015. B2B publisher revenue grew by 5.0% across the same annual period.
In the 12 months to September 2016 – across B2B and B2C publishers – display remains the largest revenue category across all platforms at 37% of total revenue. Sponsorship and subscriptions account for 21% and 15% respectively.
The research, which also measures the confidence of AOP board members, found that respondents’ overall optimism about the financial prospects of the digital publishing industry declined slightly from the previous quarter. However, AOP board members have increased their growth forecasts for the year ahead, rising to 4.8% in Q3 2016, almost double that from the previous quarter (2.5%).
Richard Reeves, Managing Director, AOP, commented: “It’s interesting to see sponsorship doing so well at a time when increased focus and revenue is being allocated to programmatic trading.” Reeves continued: “While programmatic offers a valuable strategy, the increase in sponsorship revenue demonstrates that context and content-related marketing continues to be imperative to both publishers and their advertisers. The careful balancing of both programmatic and native advertising spend is a trend we expect to see continuing throughout 2017.”
Dan Ison, lead partner for media and entertainment at Deloitte, commented: “The industry is once again proving resilient in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty. Whilst publishers’ optimism has fallen slightly from the previous quarter, it is reassuring to see that the industry’s confidence remains above that of Deloitte’s latest CFO Survey. In general, the publishing industry appears to be adopting a defensive strategy: shifting away from the introduction of new products and expansion and instead favouring cost reduction and growing existing revenue streams.”
