Serving large audiences is an exercise in getting to know your customer. How has Torstar elevated its business and survived a challenging publishing environment by identifying its true customers and engineering its products accordingly?
At Localogy’s L24 Conference in Arlington, Texas, Mike Boland sat down for an interview with Torstar Media Chief Revenue Officer Brandon Grosvenor. The conversation focused largely on how a traditional media company (Torstar’s flagship media property is the iconic Toronto Star newspaper) finds success in today’s world.
Key Takeaways
Here are a few key messages or insights that we took away from Mike’s conversation with Brandon.
- Torstar has 25 million subscribers and 65 million monthly unique visitors. The flagship Toronto Star is a top-five newspaper in North America.
- Subscriptions are an important revenue source for Torstar (and similar media organizations). In fact, subscriptions today account for 70% of revenue, with just 30% coming from advertising. The print-digital split is about 50/50 today. “We make more money now on monetizing content than from display ads.” To that end, Brandon said that Torstar is selling “a ton of” sponsored content.
- Brandon said unlike at the advent of the Internet, Torsar is “not asleep at the wheel” regarding the emergence of AI, which he says will be “the Web times 300.”
- While he expressed wariness about governments mandating about compensating publishers for using their content to train LLMs, Brandon did say, “if you are using my content for monetary gain. you should pay me.”
- In five years, Brandon expects the printed newspaper product will be gone. He also expects other revenue streams like events will grow. People want to be informed and Brandon doesn’t expect this will change. The ways by which organizations like Torstar keep people informed will change.
E44: Talking Dollars, Not Data with Torstar Corp. CRO Brandon Grosvenor
Headline Talk – Brandon Grosvenor, CRO, Torstar
Serving large audiences is an exercise in getting to know your customer. How has Torstar elevated its business and survived a challenging publishing environment by identifying its true customer and engineering its products accordingly?
Brandon Grosvenor, Torstar Media
