What we learned about the advertising needs of small publishers

In collaboration with Rebuild Local News, Tiny News Collective examined the practices indie news publishers use to build advertising revenue.

Small publishers can earn revenue from advertising sales in ways that reflect their community commitment and provide a premium audience connection to advertisers. The hardest part is getting started. 

That’s a major takeaway from Tiny News Collective and Rebuild Local News’s report, “Homegrown Advertising: How small publishers want to build revenue programs that reflect their communities.” The report examines attitudes toward advertising and practices independent publishers use to earn advertising revenue, based on surveys, focus groups and interviews with small news publishers, ad experts and academics. Although traditional newspaper publishers typically took a one-size-fits-all approach to advertising — sell X based on Y circulation — today’s community-based publishers want to create advertising revenue with the same intention and care with which they built other aspects of their organization. That involves everything from the look and feel of their advertisements to considering the type of advertiser they’ll sell to.

The Tiny News Collective exists to provide critical infrastructure, training and community to news entrepreneurs from pre-launch through their first few years. Our services include research and development projects that target this fragile and critical slice of the news ecosystem, because most existing resources are aimed at larger or more mature organizations. Documenting the advertising practices and processes used and challenges faced by publishers of this size, and helping others to understand them, can help us all to identify where we can grow and collaborate to support revenue growth and diversification.

This report, made possible by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, focuses on opportunities and challenges that small publishers face when starting an advertising program, including the technology, business workflows and sales training required. It also highlights advertising tips and strategies from successful independent publishers and areas where the broader journalism industry could develop ad tools. The first part of the report shares our research findings, and the second part includes actionable advice for publishers selling ads.

Highlights from our research include:

• Organizational readiness is a hurdle: 89 percent of news entrepreneurs surveyed cited a lack of staff and capacity that precludes them from being ready to accept even in-bound leads. They may lack advertising policies, pricing guides, and systems for fulfilling and reporting on campaigns. Early-stage founders were most likely to indicate this hurdle.
• Articulating a unique value proposition is key: Publishers who have successfully managed advertising sales don’t try to compete with Google or Meta on targeting and performance marketing. Instead, they lean into what makes their publication special: a trusted relationship with a desirable audience. 
• Indie pubs seek right-sized advertising solutions: Many newly launched entrepreneurs want to sell newsletter and digital sponsorships, as well as direct-sold digital ads, but have concerns about intrusive advertising, poor user experience and editorial independence. 
• Technology can be a stumbling block: Tech tools are not the biggest challenge to sales, but ad-tech remains a confusing landscape and lack of compatibility among various technical solutions is frustrating. Publishers don’t have time to learn and master platforms, and they need simple and experimental solutions to maximize their unique value proposition and eliminate perceived and real barriers to entry.
• Founder-led sales are both a challenge and an opportunity: In tiny news organizations, the publisher may also be the editor, the chief fundraiser and the ad sales leader, which creates a capacity issue. But experts interviewed for this report say founders believe in their publications and can do the best job telling their stories to marketers, especially in the organization’s early days and with its biggest accounts.
• Public policy ad efforts won’t reach small publishers without support: Lobbying efforts in a growing number of states and municipalities direct government ad spending to local news. Without targeted support that addresses the challenges outlined here, small publishers without sufficient ad programs won’t be able to capture those dollars.

With the partnership of Rebuild Local News, we were able to expand the scope of this work to include a greater quantity of publishers in this work and information about the state of policy advertising.

We invite publishers, funders, technology providers, marketers and journalism support professionals to let us know how this report helps them understand the current landscape of this valuable-yet-evolving revenue stream for the next generation of journalism publishers.

Download a PDF of "Homegrown Advertising: How small publishers want to build revenue programs that reflect their communities" on Tiny News Collective's website, or read it here.

In February, we will offer two webinars expanding on the results of our research findings and reviewing strategies we shared for publishers to employ in building their advertising programs. Register for these webinars below:

Homegrown Advertising: A look at the research findings on small news publisher advertising
With Madison Karas of Tiny News Collective and Lori Henson of Rebuild Local News
Tuesday, February 11, 2025, at noon PT / 3 p.m. ET
Register here

Homegrown Advertising: Tips for small news publishers building advertising programs
With Madison Karas and Erica Perel of Tiny News Collective
Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at noon PT / 3 p.m. ET
Register here

Featured image: Planeta Venus in Wichita put on its first Latino Awards Dinner in 2024, part of its efforts to sell advertising and sponsorships. (Photo originally provided by Claudia Amaro)