Innovation of New Revenue Streams in Digital Media: Journalism as Customer Relationship

Recent digital transformations of the media landscape have altered media economics. Media outlets are experiencing a decline in newspaper circulation and are struggling to develop new revenue streams within digital media. Newspaper publishers are accustomed to a two-sided revenue model geared towards readers and advertisers. In digital publishing, such two-sided revenue models must be further developed. This article describes a model in which journalistic content functions as an engine for digital traffic, and how that market position is used to promote other commercial digital services. Unlike earlier advertising models, the media company itself has become both the advertiser and the owner of the promoted services. This article’s contribution is a description of how new revenue streams are being developed around digital journalistic products. A case study of the Schibsted Media Group, including examples from the media outlets VG (Norway) and Aftonbladet (Sweden), is used here as the empirical source.