A presidential election year has the potential to be a boon for news and politics publishers when it comes to drawing in and monetizing audiences. But even though 2024 is a lot like 2020 on paper, platform performance issues and an unreliable ad market may make this election cycle less lucrative than hoped.

For Newsweek’s global chief commercial and growth officer Kevin Gentzel, this means testing out new audience growth strategies and revenue streams to get back to growth this year.

“We did end the year with some growth, which was great, [but we] didn't achieve what we set out to accomplish in [2023]. But I feel like we strategically started to sow seeds throughout the year that we knew were going to strategically benefit the business, our readers, brand partners, and start to develop other core commercial aspects of the company that we're beginning to see in 2024 and beyond,” said Gentzel.

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Gentzel discusses how his team is generating referral traffic from alternative platforms, why political advertising dollars are hard to compete for and how Newsweek is looking to monetize readers with new subscription offerings.