Today, it is conventional wisdom that search and social platforms are not so generous with referral traffic. As a result, news sites are looking elsewhere for new readers.
The good news is that you don’t have to feel in the dark. Successful news sites of all sizes are finding new traffic today through strategies such as working with news aggregators, buying traffic from trusted sources, and making editorial decisions based on massive data sets.
The decline in traffic to news sites is slowing as the industry adopts new strategies to acquire readers
In the early 2000s, news sites like Yahoo and MSN were among the most trafficked around the world By 2010, the landscape had changed dramatically. Google and social media platforms had usurped them.
News sites had to work harder to attract new readers, relying heavily on referral traffic from search and social media platforms. In those days, Google, Twitter and Facebook were much more generous with traffic, but this trend has been dramatically reversed. Also, an increase in the social media platforms they have never interested in sharing traffic, such as Instagram and TikTok, have grown in popularity.
As a result, traffic to news sites declined. The average monthly unique visitors to the world’s most visited digital news websites (those with at least 10 million unique visitors per month in the fourth quarter of a given year) have down 3% in the last two years.
But this period of decline is already slowing and will quickly reverse itself as the industry moves away from its reliance on search and social platforms and adopts new strategies to attract readers.
3 ways to attract news readers outside of search and social media
Some news sites are already managing to reverse the decline in traffic. Their strategies are based on attracting new readers in high volume where they congregate outside of search and social platforms, meaning their devices and other news sites.
1. Work with news aggregators
News aggregators have two main advantages: they curate personalized experiences for readers, and they can reach people on their devices before they open a social app or web browser.
These benefits are a big boost for news sites, which have struggled to deliver the personalized experiences people have come to love from social media apps and search engines.
Additionally, news aggregators such as Taboola News, Apple News, and Google News allow publishers to reach readers on their home screen feeds before they unlock their phones.
For example, we work with The Independent in the UK, USA, Singapore and other countries. They use Taboola News to increase traffic and revenue by diversifying referral sources. It quickly became one of Taboola’s top three traffic referral sources Singapore Independentgenerating 3% more views per visit.
Taboola News generates 6% of the total traffic of the HuffPost Korea. They were an early adopter of the technology, which distributes its content in premium placements on Samsung smartphones in the Korean market.
You want to be picky about the news aggregators you work with. You should be sure that your audiences are engaged and that the clicks are not accidental. You will always be more successful working with an incentivized platform to help you grow, like Taboola. Our growth is directly correlated to our partner’s growth.
2. Buy traffic
Buying traffic can be tricky when budgets are tight, but buying profitable traffic remains an essential strategy for many news sites. But, its success depends on the platform.
The ads are more and more expensive on platforms like Meta and Google at a time when new privacy legislation makes it harder than ever to know if these ads are working. In comparison, many publishers find that buying ads others News sites are a cost-effective way to get new traffic. It makes sense why: It’s a natural journey for readers to jump from reading news content from site to site rather than jumping from ad to article.
Our partners find Taboola Ads to be an affordable way to drive traffic to the pages that generate the most value, such as brand campaigns, underserved ad campaigns, newsletters or e-commerce pages.
MoneyWisea digital personal finance publication powered by Wise Publishing, simplifies complex financial topics for readers. The site is run by real people from all financial backgrounds—homeowners, recent grads, parents, spouses, and investors saving for retirement—and has a growing audience of seven million unique monthly readers.
Moneywise uses Taboola Ads to generate high-quality reader traffic and increase click-through rate (CTR) through optimization strategies such as Maximize Conversions.
Buying traffic isn’t just about volume; it’s about targeting the right readers who are more likely to engage and stay on your site. Successful news sites often use a combination of paid traffic strategies, such as retargeting past visitors and reaching lookalike audiences that reflect their most engaged readers. This approach generates immediate traffic and encourages long-term growth by focusing on high-quality audiences that become loyal readers.
Another key strategy is to allocate budget and editorial effort to content with the highest potential for reader engagement and revenue generation. Taboola Newsroom shows Taboola partners which articles have the most engagement, using a definition that fits their publication. For example, driving traffic to articles that are already performing well organically can increase their reach, turning popular content into even bigger traffic drivers. Smart bidding strategies, like those used by Taboola, allow publishers to optimize their spend in real-time, adjusting bids based on performance metrics to ensure that every dollar spent is reaching valuable readers.
Some news publishers also find success in buying traffic to high-converting pages, such as newsletter sign-ups or membership offers, effectively using paid traffic as a gateway to further engagement and monetization opportunities deep Buying traffic can be a powerful tool in a news site’s growth strategy by carefully managing ad spend and focusing on engaged audiences.
Incentives also come into play here. The more resources you allocate to publisher-owned channels that are not incentivized to help news sites grow, the less likely you are to succeed in the long term.
3. Make editorial decisions based on data
High quality content is the best way to attract new readers. If you want to acquire them at scale, you need to base editorial decisions on insights that dictate what these readers consider quality reporting.
Our partner network generates a massive dataset of over 500 million daily active readers. Taboola Newsroom helps writers, editors and special interest teams make sense of this data to make informed decisions to grow their audience.
Newsroom monitors historical and real-time data about the performance of content on your news site and other sites partnered with Taboola. We track page views, the rate at which traffic is acquired and engagement. We can segment this data by reference type, section or author.
This data helps our partners uncover news angles they haven’t covered yet for trending topics, see which topics are currently trending across channels, or focus on search and social traffic.
FOX SPORTS Australia uses Newsroom to make sports coverage decisions on its subscription TV sports channels and the country’s number one multi-sports website and app.
The editorial team can see real-time snapshots of trending topics and what content users are searching for, helping writers decide which stories to focus on.
Summit Mediathe Philippines’ leading digital media network, has a similar story. Using data from Taboola Newsroom, they create valuable, entertaining and inspiring content that helps readers lead better lives.
The Summit Media team acts on at least 50% of Taboola Newsroom alerts. These alerts help them act quickly to produce more relevant content and maximize page views for their articles.
“If we get an alert about a particular story gaining traction on social media, we typically prioritize it for optimization. Alerts also help us identify which stories to highlight on our homepages. There’s very little guesswork and it speeds up decision-making for busy publishers,” said Jillian Gatcheco, associate editorial director of operations and product development.
You can’t just rely on data from social media and other channels to predict your site’s readership – these audiences have completely different mindsets. To make the best content decisions, you need data directly related to how people interact with a news site.
You also don’t want to neglect Google Discover, which makes recommendations on Android devices and Chrome browsers. But knowing how to increase traffic from there can be tricky. Newsroom provides reliable benchmark traffic data from Google Discover based on your site’s traffic patterns.
Gain a unique advantage to attract new readers and grow your audience
News sites can no longer rely solely on traditional sources like search engines and social media for traffic. These platforms tend to keep readers to themselves. Now is the time for news sites to attract readers and grow their audience elsewhere.
News sites will do this in 2025 by working with news aggregators, investing in paid traffic and gathering the right information.
Taboola offers a unique advantage: we connect our partners with readers from our network of more than 500 million daily active readers on other sites and devices, supporting traffic acquisition and content monetization strategies. Our tools, such as Taboola Newsroom and Trends, enable publishers to make informed editorial decisions, optimize content performance and increase engagement.
You want to attract new readers, but ultimately you want to set yourself up to retain them. The higher percentage of readers that can come back even one more time, the more sustainable growth you’ll see over the long term.
Stay tuned for the next article in our series, where we’ll look at strategies to keep users on your site once you’ve captured their attention.
Are you ready to take your audience growth to the next level? Contact Taboola today to explore how we can help you reach and retain high-quality readers.