Membrana Media at Press Gazette Media Strategy Network, NYC

What’s changing (and fast)

Press Gazette’s Media Strategy Network USA, held this March in New York’s financial district, is built for working conversations.

Around sixty senior executives: editors-in-chief, product and commercial leads, and publisher CEOs from organizations including CNN, Condé Nast, Hearst, Reuters, BBC and The Washington Post rotate through small roundtables, comparing what is actually working and what is not.

Membrana Media joined as a roundtable partner, represented by Siebren Roorda (VP Americas & Western Europe) and Olga Beregova (Business Development Manager). The real value is simple: direct access to how publishers are thinking right now.

And right now, the thinking is shifting. Traffic is no longer a stable foundation. Platforms change rules, zero‑click environments grow, AI redirects consumption. Content is still used, just not always on publisher sites.

So traffic starts to look less like an asset and more like something you borrow.

What actually matters more is attention: time spent, repeat visits, and habit. The question is no longer “how do we get more users?” but “what do we do with the ones who already care?”

Loyal audiences and very early experiments

Publishers are clearly turning towards owned audiences: subscribers, registered users, newsletters. But monetization here is still underdeveloped. Most teams are only starting to test new models: better ad experiences for logged‑in users, commerce inside content, sponsorships built around attention, not impressions.

This is not a finished strategy. It’s an experimentation phase. The industry is just turning its head in this direction.This is exactly where Membrana Media’s focus fits.

The next step is not about selling more inventory. It’s about monetising the user experience, especially for loyal audiences.

Because the most engaged users are also the hardest to monetize with old formats. They don’t tolerate disruption. And if you push too hard, you lose the very attention you’re trying to sell.

 So the logic changes. It’s not more impressions per page. It’s more valuable per user.

From traffic to leverage

Alongside this, publishers are rethinking what they actually sell. Less focus on scale, and more focus on control. Direct audience relationships, subscriptions, partnerships, licensing; all becoming part of the same equation. Content is no longer just something to monetise through ads. It’s an asset that can work in multiple ways.

In that sense, publishers are not really selling impressions anymore.They are selling access to attention they still control.

AI is accelerating this shift. More publishers are starting to push back: restricting crawlers, thinking about licensing, treating content as something with standalone value – not just fuel for other platforms. At the same time, internal structures are changing.

Editorial, product and monetization can’t operate separately anymore. Technology and data are moving into the core of decision-making, not sitting on the side.

Where this is going

There’s still no clear model yet. But the direction is becoming obvious. Publishers are moving away from chasing volume and starting to focus on value.

• Not how many users come, but which ones actually return.
• Not how wide distribution is, but how people engage with the content.
• Not how much traffic you get, but whether it brings real revenue.

This shift is already happening. Most teams are just starting to test what that looks like in practice.