Navigating Italian News: Topics, Formats and Willingness to Pay

What news topics are consumers interested in and willing to pay for? What are their preferences in terms of formats? How do these differ by demographics?

These are the questions we at FT Strategies set ourselves in the hopes of diving deeper into evolving digital news consumption habits and preferences in a rapidly changing news environment.

To achieve this study, we surveyed over 2,000 Italian news consumers and asked them a series of questions covering:

• The brands they read and pay for
• The topics they prefer out of our carefully chosen list of 17 topics including politics, climate change, internet trends, social issues, and many more
• Their willingness to pay for each of these topics
• Preferences for formats including text, audio and video
• What is missing and what they would like to see more of in Italian news

We focused on Italian consumers as it represents a market we know deeply thanks to our long-standing work with publishers in the region.

We think Italy represents an interesting dynamic for the news industry. On one side there is still a strong (yet declining) print tradition, while on the other a digital population seeking new formats especially in audio and video. As a consequence, established traditional publishers are experimenting with digital subscription models by doubling down on their premium brand positioning, while simultaneously, a community of news startups is starting to take market share by focusing on podcasts and younger audiences.

We hope this study inspires you to:

• Understand more deeply the needs and preferences of news consumers
• Have a clearer picture of your unique selling point and which consumers are most likely to pay for your product
• Inform your future content and editorial strategy
• Think creatively about which formats to expand into