A total 69% attendees of the INMA Subscriber Acquisition Master Class reported a U.S. presidential election-related spike in traffic; 21% saw a spike in subscription sales.

The November master class was attended by 158 news professionals from 41 countries. The survey result hit headlines on CNN’s Reliable Sources. 

Per Google Trends, interest in Donald Trump-related keywords in the U.S. in the election week was higher than at the previous election in 2016 and 2020. Trump’s victory elevated interest globally.

These are some of the first signals that another “Trump bump” is likely. 

Online traffic trends

At the same time, the campaign mobilised mostly Americans. In the third quarter, during the final months before the vote, INMA saw clearly higher demand for online news in North America but not internationally. 

Per INMA Benchmarks, online traffic to North American Web sites was almost as high as during the final months before the election in 2020.

The median North American news brand saw spikes in online users and sessions vs. the first quarter (22.4% and 19.4%, respectively), several times higher than internationally (5% and 3.9%, respectively).

Online subscription trends

Surprisingly, this higher demand for news during the campaign was not translated into conversions. 

In the third quarter of 2024, the median North American brand was selling only 71 digital subscriptions per 1 million online users, while it sold 203 subscriptions four years earlier. 

Around the election day, individual U.S. brands reported both gains and losses in subscriptions.

INMA tracks performance of 252 news brands worldwide, but we collect the data with delay. We’ll provide further benchmarks in the coming months.

History of news cycle bumps

In the past five years, we could clearly observe an impact of big news events on demand. 

In our global benchmarks, we saw the COVID bump, the 2020 U.S. election and its aftermath, and the start of war in Ukraine in 2022. 

The individual patterns of demand depend on how these events unfold. For example, sports tournaments and elections with winning incumbents often see a demand rising slowly until the final, and then quickly dropping. 

This time in the United States, the incumbent lost. The new president announced a number of changes in policies related to defence, trade, taxes, immigration, and government spending. These will impact millions, both in the U.S. and internationally.

So one could expect a multi-peak increase in demand: outcome of the vote different than in the polls, and then the subsequent rise in interest in new policies, and the drama that might follow.

Stock market investors seem to believe this is the case, as the share price of many U.S. news media companies rose after the election faster than the S&P 500 index, which tracks the overall performance of the U.S. stock market.

Interested in risks of selling subscriptions to audiences driven by noble causes? Read my analysis of The Washington Post boycott. 

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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