News publishers are facing a squeeze on core revenue streams. In the UK, ad revenue is shrinking around 8 per cent for national news brands. Only around 8 per cent of people say they are willing to pay for news.

At the News and Editorial SEO Summit 2025 this week (22 October 2025), Harry Clarkson-Bennett, SEO director at The Telegraph, tackled the obvious question: how should news businesses make money now?

His answer: understand the real risks and rewards of paywalling, diversify your revenue streams, and start planning to go beyond the old SEO playbook.

The Telegraph became the third British news organisation to pass the one million digital subscriber mark in 2023. This is no accident. It has continued to test when to put up the paywalls, finding that around 60 per cent of users hit a paywall (varying by region and user data).

This is a fine balancing act as paywalls can make or break organic traffic and a blanket approach can backfire. The publisher has found that dynamic paywalls are more efficient because they ask people to pay depending on a number of factors:

Behavioural triggers: The paywall........

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