Monday 2nd August: Guardian digital reader revenue climbs, half from outside UK

August 02, 2021

Good morning, welcome to August. Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

International revenues now make up more than 30% of Guardian Media Group’s total income according to financial results for the year to 28 March 2021. More than half of The Guardian’s digital reader revenue comes from outside the UK, with the US election campaign cited as a key driver.

Digital reader revenue was £68.7 million, up 61% on last year. Digital subscriptions were up 46% year-on-year to 401,000; recurring contributions were up 24% to 560,000; and The Guardian received 585,000 single contributions globally, up 83% on the year before.

All this is good news for the group. Although it still posted a £10 million operating loss for the year, GMG’s net operating cash outflow was £15.6m in 2021, inside the £25 million interest returned on the £1.15 billion Scott Trust Endowment Fund. Not perfect, but very much in the right direction.

Trying to keep up with the relentless pace of change at the moment? Jason Kint at DCN has helpfully listed the top four digital media trends that he is keeping an eye on - the ad rebound; privacy, direct revenue and streaming.

Google has unveiled more detail on its cookieless ad targeting and measurement plans. As announced in June, support for third-party cookies in Chrome will phase out late in 2023. New info includes a measurement testing programme for late 2021, with tech released to developers late 2022. And this time they mean it, seriously.

The News Corp. channel has been banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies. The breaches were around the posting of videos allegedly denying COVID's existence. YouTube’s action was said to be in 'stark contrast to the response from local media regulators'. 🤔

Listen to the podcast:

No new episode this week, but last week we heard from Sophie Cross, the founder and editor of Freelancer magazine. She talked about her penchant for writing business plans, the freelance community that inspired the Freelancer magazine launch, and how she kept the spark going after the initial rush of the first issue.

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