Syndication Has Grown Up. Has Your Publishing Strategy?

Publishers are turning greater focus towards syndication platforms like Apple News after seeing Google traffic nosedive (Image: Daniel Korpai/Unsplash)

A couple of really terrific pieces caught my attention this week. Both paint a compelling picture of the growing importance of Apple News - a platform that now has more paying subscribers than any individual news brand in the country.

The indomitable Ricky Sutton at Future Media went deep into Apple’s advertising business but also shone a light on the startling economics of the increasingly popular news app - and why some publishers getting it right on Apple News+ are eyeing a prize of millions of pounds per year.

Bron Maher at A Media Operator also digs into some fascinating Enders Analysis research on Apple News’ presence in the UK, highlighting the brands who are winning but also the variety of ways it is benefitting them - yes, the aforementioned shares of advertising, subscription and affiliate revenue, but also the opportunity to cross-promote newsletters, podcasts and even invite donations to an enormous audience every day.

These pieces crystallised something we’ve been hearing in conversation after conversation with publishers: as Google Search and Discover traffic declines, syndication platforms aren’t just picking up the slack — they’re becoming a strategic priority in their own right.

The Google problem is real

Publishers have spent the best part of two decades optimising for Google. Search was joined and later overtaken by Discover as the engine of audience growth, and for good reason. The numbers were large and the trade was clear: we give you our content, you give us an audience.

But the landscape has shifted. Algorithm updates are more frequent and more disruptive. AI overviews are absorbing clicks that used to land on publisher pages. Discover has become so volatile that many publishers can no longer plan around it. The direction of travel is clear: Google is keeping more users within its own ecosystem, and publishers are feeling the squeeze.

Metro’s Sofia Delgado explains that clear insights from Maro helped drive a 25% increase in MSN engagement.

Aggregators: from passive portals to active platforms

For years, syndication was something publishers set up and forgot about. Content went in one end, some traffic came out of what were once described as “portals” at the other. Nobody thought too hard about it. As one publisher told us recently: “We used to see it as just another funnel for our content.”

That’s changing. Publishers are starting to recognise that syndication platforms — Apple News, MSN, SmartNews, NewsBreak and others — aren’t just distribution pipes. They’re smart platforms with distinct audiences, distinct formats, and distinct revenue models. And once you start treating them that way, you unlock a completely different set of possibilities.

To give an example, Sutton’s piece cites one insider at Apple News who says publishers seeing real results on the app are those dedicating unique content to the platform — in their words, at least 40 articles a day. That’s hardly tinkering around the edges, but the impact is huge. Sutton’s reporting identified 7 or even 8 figure annual returns for the biggest hitters on Apple News+.

The audiences — and the money — are already there

Those reported multi-million returns aren’t coming from nowhere. Apple News reaches around 125 million monthly users and is the number one news app in the US, Canada, and Australia. Its paid tier has been growing rapidly: CIRP research showed the proportion of US Apple device owners subscribing to News+ grew from 15% to 24% between 2020 and 2024 — roughly four times the growth rate of the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal over the same period. In the UK alone, Enders Analysis estimated 1.7 million Apple News+ subscribers are generating subscription revenue above £100 million annually, half of which goes to publishers.

And Apple News is just one platform. Factor in revenue share from MSN, SmartNews, and NewsBreak, plus affiliate revenue from lifestyle and review content and the compounding value of brand recognition across multiple platforms, and you start to see why publishers who’ve been treating syndication as an afterthought are leaving serious opportunities on the table.

Different platforms, different playbooks

Every syndication platform has its own audience behaviour and algorithmic logic. Apple News readers behave differently from MSN readers. SmartNews surfaces content differently from NewsBreak. The publishers who are winning are the ones tailoring headlines, packaging, and content mix for each platform — the same way they’ve done with social media for years. The difference is that syndication platforms often deliver more meaningful engagement (at least in direct revenue terms).

To be clear, none of this means taking focus away from your owned platforms. Your website, your app, your newsletters — these are still where your brand lives and where your deepest audience relationships are built. The point isn’t to divert resource from that. It’s to apply the same kind of platform-specific thinking to syndication that you’ve already applied to search and social: understand the audience, adapt the approach, measure what works.

There’s evidence that the platforms themselves are maturing in how they think about this. MSN, for example, shifted its revenue share model in late 2025 from page views to delivered ad impressions — a move that better reflects genuine user engagement and rewards publishers who create content people actually spend time with, not just click on.

The measurement gap

This is where things get stuck for most publishers. If you can’t easily see how a story performs on Apple News versus MSN versus SmartNews versus NewsBreak, you can’t optimise for any of them. If you can’t compare syndication engagement against your own site or app, you can’t make informed decisions about where to invest editorial effort.

As we’ve been building Maro this past year we kept hearing the same thing: publishers knew syndication mattered more for them than it used to, but they had no clear view on how to act on that instinct because the data wasn’t there.

That challenge shaped the platform we’ve built today — one that brings syndication analytics alongside web, app and newsletter performance so publishers can finally see the full picture and make decisions accordingly.

Early movers will have the advantage

The shift from passive to active syndication is still early. Most publishers are somewhere in the middle — aware that Google traffic is declining, interested in syndication, but not yet treating it with the same rigour they apply to SEO or social.

That’s an opportunity. The publishers who invest in understanding their syndication performance now will build audiences and revenue streams that are more diversified, more resilient, and less dependent on the whims of a single algorithm.

Syndication has grown up. Does your publishing strategy need to grow with it?

Want to better understand your syndication performance and drive more revenue?
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