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MORE FACT SHEETS: STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA

The vast majority of adults in the United States get at least some news online (via smartphone, computer or tablet), and the online space has become a host for the digital homes of both legacy news outlets and new, “born on the web” news outlets.* Digital advertising revenue across all digital entities (beyond just news) continues to grow, with technology companies playing a large role in the flow of both news and revenue. Explore the patterns and longitudinal data about digital news below.

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Audience

The news outlets included in this analysis are those whose primary domain – the outlet’s flagship website – averaged at least 10 million unique visitors per month from October to December of each year analyzed, according to Comscore, a cross-platform audience measurement company. This includes both digital-native news publishers, such as Axios or HuffPost, and so-called “legacy” news organizations (those that originated in print or broadcast) like The New York Times or Fox News that met those traffic levels. There were 97 such outlets in 2020 (for a full list of outlets and collection methods, see the methodology).

The average fourth quarter, monthly unique visitors for the primary domains of these outlets in 2020 was 32.1 million, an 11% increase over the 29 million visitors those sites received in 2019, according to Comscore data. The average minutes per visit was 1.95, down from 2.13 minutes in 2019.

Website traffic and time spent for news outlets

YearAverage monthly unique visitors
Q4 2019 28,985,658
Q4 2020 32,096,048

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YearAverage minutes per visit
Q4 2019 2.13
Q4 2020 1.95

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Outlets have several options for reaching their consumers online, including apps, newsletters, podcasts and aggregation platforms like Apple News or Flipboard. The use of those different tools varies across news outlets. In a Pew Research Center audit of 97 outlets conducted in mid-2021, about seven-in-ten of these highest-traffic news outlets (73%) have apps for at least one of the two main mobile platforms (iOS and Android). Those outlets that do have apps tend to offer them for both platforms: About two-in-three (64%) have apps for both platforms, while 9% have just an iOS app. None only offer an Android app.

Mobile app availability for news outlets

YearAndroid onlyiOS onlyAndroid + iOS
2021 0 9 64

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News outlets are also adopting other digital outreach and engagement methods. Nearly all of these outlets offer newsletters (93%) and have an official presence on Flipboard (95%) or Apple News (88%). Three-in-four release podcasts, and 39% allow comments on their articles.

These outlets are also highly likely to use social media as part of their outreach. All outlets studied here have an official presence on Facebook and Twitter, while at least nine-in-ten have a presence on Instagram (96%) and YouTube (93%). Fewer outlets have accounts on TikTok (57%) and Snapchat (26%).

Digital outreach methods for news outlets

Outreach type2021
Newsletters 93
Flipboard 95
Apple News 88
Podcasts 75
Comments 39

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Platform2021
Facebook 100
Twitter 100
Instagram 96
YouTube 93
TikTok 57
Snapchat 26

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Economics

Digital advertising continues to grow as a proportion of total advertising revenue, a trend driven in large part by growth in advertising on mobile devices. The estimates below are for all digital advertising revenue, not just for news outlets, and thus are an indicator of the general direction of the economic health of the digital realm rather than the digital news sector specifically.

In 2020, according to eMarketer estimates, digital advertising grew to $152 billion, an increase from $132 billion in 2019 and $111 billion in 2018. It was estimated to comprise 63% of all advertising revenue, up from 55% in 2019 and 49% in 2018.

Digital and non-digital advertising revenue

YearNondigital advertisingDigital advertising
2011 $124,821,360,000 $31,998,790,000
2012 $126,904,910,000 $36,820,240,000
2013 $126,215,710,000 $43,026,350,000
2014 $124,967,230,000 $49,688,350,000
2015 $121,687,590,000 $59,347,360,000
2016 $121,065,630,000 $71,944,310,000
2017 $116,896,750,000 $88,664,170,000
2018 $114,806,390,000 $111,074,820,000
2019 $109,734,470,000 $132,456,430,000
2020 $89,842,390,000 $152,252,850,000

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Mobile advertising revenue also continued to grow rapidly in 2020, increasing from $87.3 billion in 2019 to $102.6 billion. Between 2011 and 2020, mobile advertising revenue increased roughly sixtyfold, from $1.7 billion in 2011 to $102.6 billion in 2020. Desktop advertising revenue increased from $30.3 billion to $40.6 billion over the same time period. In 2020, mobile advertising revenue comprised two-thirds of digital advertising revenue on mobile and desktop devices, up from 5% in 2011.

Digital advertising revenue on desktop and mobile

YearDesktop digital advertisingMobile digital advertising
2011 30,296,080,000 1,702,710,000
2012 31,797,860,000 5,022,380,000
2013 32,897,440,000 10,128,910,000
2014 31,720,100,000 17,968,250,000
2015 31,413,230,000 27,934,130,000
2016 31,141,770,000 40,802,530,000
2017 31,739,070,000 54,289,360,000
2018 35,759,110,000 70,960,710,000
2019 38,732,920,000 87,299,060,000
2020 40,623,930,000 102,598,810,000

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Looking more specifically at digital display ads, which include banners, videos and other advertisements that news organizations and other websites typically run alongside their content, revenue continued to rise for most formats in 2020. The rise was driven primarily by growth in mobile display ad revenue (desktop display includes advertising on desktop and laptop computers and other nonmobile internet-connected devices).

Video ads were the largest segment of this market in 2020 at $41.4 billion, growing 30% from the previous year. Banner ads also showed double-digit growth, rising 14% over 2019 to $35 billion in 2020.

Digital display advertising revenue by device type

YearDesktop display advertisingMobile display advertising
2011 11,761,460,000 563,760,000
2012 12,271,170,000 2,247,910,000
2013 12,181,650,000 5,308,920,000
2014 11,420,280,000 9,645,840,000
2015 10,733,210,000 15,709,950,000
2016 12,231,300,000 22,403,170,000
2017 12,659,390,000 29,873,160,000
2018 13,605,810,000 39,706,280,000
2019 14,567,960,000 50,012,400,000
2020 14,967,270,000 61,185,220,000

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Type2017201820192020
Banner ads 22,270,670,000 26,583,740,000 30,830,100,000 35,081,550,000
Sponsorship ads 2,184,880,000 2,524,900,000 2,839,380,000 2,782,600,000
Video ads 16,310,250,000 23,504,760,000 31,858,630,000 41,440,150,000
Rich media other 4,402,490,000 5,053,690,000 5,476,710,000 5,878,300,000

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Digital display advertising revenue continued to be dominated by just a few companies in 2020. Facebook comprised 45% of this advertising segment, according to eMarketer estimates. Google accounted for 10% of this segment, while no other company controlled more than 5% of this market. (In 2017, Verizon purchased Yahoo and created a new subsidiary called Oath that incorporated Yahoo, AOL and Verizon’s other digital entities. In 2019, Oath was renamed the Verizon Media Group. And in 2021, after this data was collected, Verizon sold Yahoo to Apollo Global Management.)

In the mobile sector, Facebook captured more than half (60%) of mobile digital display advertising revenue, according to eMarketer estimates. No other company controlled more than 10% of the mobile market.

Digital display advertising revenue by company

YearOtherTwitterVerizonYahooAmazonGoogleFacebook
2014 48 4 4 6 1 15 23
2015 43 5 4 5 1 14 29
2016 41 4 3 4 1 12 36
2017 40 2 5 2 11 40
2018 37 2 4 3 11 43
2019 36 2 3 4 11 44
2020 35 2 3 5 10 45

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YearOtherLinkedInMicrosoftSnapchatTwitterGoogleFacebook
2014 48 1 7 11 34
2015 45 1 <1 7 8 38
2016 38 1 1 5 8 47
2017 34 1 2 3 7 53
2018 30 1 2 3 6 57
2019 28 2 2 3 6 59
2020 27 2 2 3 6 60

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Newsroom investment

Roughly 18,000 employees worked as reporters, editors, photographers or videographers in the newsrooms of digital-native outlets (outlets that were born on the web) in 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). (Digital-native newsroom employment and wage data is based on the “other information services” industry code, whose largest component is “internet publishing and broadcasting and web search portals.” For details, see the methodology [LINK].) The median annual wage for reporters was roughly $73,000 and it was $69,000 for editors in 2020, while the median annual wage for photographers was roughly $75,000. (Data was not available in 2020 for television, film and video editors and camera operators.)

Employment in digital-native newsrooms

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data." data-share-image="">

YearNewsroom employees
2008 7,400
2009 8,090
2010 8,090
2011 9,520
2012 10,750
2013 11,250
2014 11,180
2015 11,710
2016 12,830
2017 13,260
2018 13,470
2019 16,090
2020 18,030

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Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data." data-share-image="">

YearNews analysts, reporters
and journalists
EditorsPhotographersTelevision, video, and film camera operators and
editors
2012 $52,589 $61,365 $55,345 $50,928
2013 $51,609 $64,186 $65,299 $42,572
2014 $54,252 $62,373 $57,328 $55,730
2015 $57,655 $62,561 $59,687
2016 $64,191 $61,700 $66,392
2017 $63,748 $63,854
2018 $63,829 $65,416
2019 $68,950 $67,361 $64,688
2020 $73,300 $69,460 $75,410

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Is a service that alerts local newsrooms to topics that are trending on social media.

Find out more

This fact sheet was compiled by Senior Computational Social Scientist Galen Stocking and Maya Khuzam, who was a Research Assistant at Pew Research Center from 2019-2021.

Read the methodology.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

* Note (November 2019): We have removed a previously posted data point from this sentence because of methodological concerns about measuring total online news use using an online panel. A new data point for online news consumption is available in this blog post.

Find more in-depth explorations of digital news by following the links below:

  • Facebook Posts in Early Days of Biden Administration Reflect Ideological Divide, June 14, 2021
  • 70% of U.S. social media users never or rarely post or share about political, social issues, May 4, 2021
  • Partisan differences in social media use show up for some platforms, but not Facebook, April 7, 2021
  • News Use Across Social Media Platforms in 2020, 12, 2021
  • More than eight-in-ten Americans get news from digital devices, 12, 2021
  • Many Americans Get News on YouTube, Where News Organizations and Independent Producers Thrive Side by Side, 28, 2020
  • Key facts about digital-native news outlets amid staff cuts, revenue losses, July 14, 2020
  • As COVID-19 Emerged in U.S., Facebook Posts About It Appeared in a Wide Range of Public Pages, Groups, June 24, 2020
  • U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided, Jan. 24, 2020
  • Americans favor mobile devices over desktops and laptops for getting news, 19, 2019
  • Americans Are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering the News, Oct. 2, 2019

Which is the name for newsrooms that have multiple platforms for delivering the news?

Multimedia journalism is the practice of contemporary journalism that distributes news content either using two or more media formats via the Internet, or disseminating news report via multiple media platforms.

What type of media was used to present the news?

The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include print media (newspapers, newsmagazines), broadcast news (radio and television), and the Internet (online newspapers, news blogs, news videos, live news streaming, etc.).

What is journalism explain?

journalism, the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through such print and electronic media as newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, webcasts, podcasts, social networking and social media sites, and e-mail as well as through radio, motion pictures, and ...

What term refers to a collection of webpages that enables anyone who accesses them to provide input and even modify their content?

A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ ( listen) WIK-ee) is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser.