Australia’s digital advertising market is powering ahead – with overall internet ad spend reaching AUD 17.2 billion in fiscal 2025, up 10.6 per cent year‑on‑year. Within that growth, video formats have emerged as a major growth engine – accounting for nearly AUD 5.0 billion and representing 29 per cent of total online advertising spend.
Yet, for publishers of news content, particularly digital news providers, the story is more nuanced. While overall digital ad spend is reportedly strong, the segment of “news‑site” ad inventory is under pressure from multiple directions: shifting audiences, intensifying competition, and evolving advertiser expectations.
A key factor is how Australians are consuming news. According to the latest Digital News Report: Australia 2025 by the University of Canberra News & Media Research Centre, social media has, for the first time, overtaken traditional online news websites as Australians’ main source of news (26 per cent vs. 23 per cent).
The report also notes that among 18‑24‑year‑olds, Instagram (40 per cent) and TikTok (36 per cent) are major news sources.
This shift presents both challenge and opportunity. On one hand, news publishers face audience fragmentation and strong competition for attention from social platforms and non‑news content. On the other hand, it opens new formats, new audience segments, and offers the chance to build differentiated, premium environments for advertisers.
From the advertiser’s perspective the broader digital market looks healthy. In the March quarter of 2025, total internet advertising spend in Australia rose 11.6 per cent to AUD 4.2 billion. Video advertising grew 23.3 per cent year‑on‑year and accounted for AUD 1.165 billion of that quarterly spend.
Meanwhile, search advertising rose 10 per cent to AUD 1.896 billion. Display advertising excluding video, however, was almost flat, showing just 0.9 per cent growth to AUD 461 million.
From the publishers’ side the challenges are more acute. News‑media brands contend with declining loyalty among younger consumers, shifting consumption behaviours, and advertiser demands for scale, targeting and measurable ROI.
Although detailed public data on “news‑site” ad revenue is limited, observers note that traditional news publishing – including both print and digital – continues to face revenue headwinds amid the rise of platform‑driven distribution. News publishers must increasingly demonstrate value beyond impressions: premium context, brand safety, high‑engagement content, and first‑party data have become differentiators.
Despite the headwinds, a balanced view shows that the digital news‑advertising ecosystem is at a crossroads rather than in terminal decline. The overall market is growing, new formats and platforms are emerging, and smart publishers are innovating. At the same time, legacy news‑formats have less room for error: they must modernise to meet advertiser demands and audience behaviours.
For advertisers, the shift means re‑thinking allocation of ad dollars, moving away from “anywhere on the web” towards context‑rich, brand‑safe placements with measurable outcomes. For news publishers, the strategic questions are clear: how to retain and grow engaged audiences (particularly younger cohorts), how to monetise beyond commoditised display ads, and how to build data and content assets that command premium pricing.
Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the interplay between big‑scale digital ad budgets, platform‑driven distribution of news, advertiser demand for measurable impact, and publisher innovation will determine which news‑brands thrive and which stagnate.