All posts tagged: Future PLC

Who What Wear on how publishers can think like retailers

Who What Wear on how publishers can think like retailers

Published by Sam Flores

Who What Wear The UK-based managing editor of fashion website Who What Wear has shared her insights into how publishers can mimic the success of retailers who are seeing booming ad sales. According to Advertising Association/WARC data, retail media advertising spend grew 17.5% to £3.8bn in the UK last year. While this is money spent with retailers themselves, such as Amazon and Tesco, in store and online – Future-owned lifestyle brand Who What Wear is an example of a publisher that has cashed in on this trend. Speaking at the PPA Festival in London on Wednesday, Poppy Nash said editorial integrity was at the heart of Who What Wear’s commercial success. She said: “Over the last ten years, we have built a brand that really comes down to one very key principle, and that is that we are a brand with editorial integrity. “We are journalists. We are experts. Every single person in my team is trained. They know what they’re doing. “So that’s meant that we have built a relationship with our audience that …

Why Future Plc share price is so low: Google blamed by CEO

Why Future Plc share price is so low: Google blamed by CEO

Published by Sam Flores

Future media brands Future plc’s share price plummeted on Tuesday as the UK-based magazine and specialist publishing giant said Google changes had led to a 20% decline in online audience in the first half of its financial year to 31 March. This continues a trend as Future’s total audience was also down about 20% in the six months to 30 September. But it indicates a sharp acceleration on the 10% decline in consumer website sessions that Future revealed in its last full-year results at the end of September 2025. Future’s share price fell 28% on Wednesday to a level last seen in 2017 of £2.82 per share, making the company worth £267m. Future has spent more than £1.5bn on acquisitions since the company was last worth its current market value. In the year to 30 September 2025, Future revenue fell 6% to £739.2m and profit before tax fell 11% to £91.9m. Future claims to reach one in three UK adults every month with more than 200 brands which include the likes of Marie Claire, The …

Top 50 UK news media companies ranking for 2026

Top 50 UK news media companies ranking for 2026

Published by Sam Flores

Top four media companies in UK by revenue. RELX Group (picture: Igor Golovniov, Shutterstock), BBC (Chris Dorney, Shutterstock), Informa (Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images), ITV (Piotr Swat, Shutterstock). The top three news media companies in the UK by revenue saw turnover increase in their latest full-year accounts, Press Gazette’s latest top 50 ranking shows. Collectively the top 50 increased their revenue by £1.1bn compared with last year, representing a 3.1% increase reporting £37.5bn versus £36.3bn. Most of the top UK media companies (29 out of 50) grew their revenue in their most recent accounts, while 17 saw decline and four remained stagnant. RELX, the BBC and Informa topped the list with highest revenues, all posting more than £3.5bn. Most of the accounts (30) cover the 2024 financial year, a period which saw inflation average 2.5% while gross domestic product (GDP, a key measure of the economy) grew by 0.4%. Our ranking is based on the most recent full-year revenue reported by each business. Because not all companies break out their different revenue streams the …

Future boosts creator content, personal buying advice and registrations

Future boosts creator content, personal buying advice and registrations

Published by Sam Flores

Future’s Simon Collis and Beehiiv’s J.T. Levin at Beehiiv event at Google HQ on Thursday 12 February 2026. Picture: LRock Media Letting creators upload stories, more personal buying advice and free memberships are big publishing trends aiming to boost revenue at Future plc. Future has evolved the way it presents shopping advice and e-commerce content via its Signal initiative, is partnering creators with its brands via the Collab initiative, and is aiming to turn unknown users into registered members via Future+. Simon Collis, senior vice president leading Future’s technology and games verticals, told an event hosted by Beehiiv and Google in London on 12 February that this set of products represents how the publisher is “building for tomorrow”. Future has also launched a new division offering GEO (optimisation for AI chatbots) to commercial partners. [Read more: Future takes action on ‘Google Zero’ as revenue declines] Via Signal, Future is focusing its affiliate content on “collections” in which one person shares their personal advice around a theme. Collis said: “The win comes from changing from what …

Women’s interest magazine sales 2025: Harper’s Bazaar grows in print and digital

Women’s interest magazine sales 2025: Harper’s Bazaar grows in print and digital

Published by Sam Flores

Harper’s Bazaar magazine cover from February 2026. Picture: Hearst Harper’s Bazaar was the only women’s interest magazine to see an increase in both print and digital circulation figures in 2025, according to the latest ABC figures. The Hearst-owned title saw an increase of 9% for print (55,764 average copies per issue) and 8% for digital circulation (18,257 copies). Across the 53 titles within women’s interest magazines, which include the women’s weeklies, home interest, fashion and cookery from ABC, the average circulation declined by 0.8% compared to 2024 figures. Scroll down for full table listing UK women’s interest magazine sales in 2025. However, due to changes in ABC regulations, many publications boosted their totals by being allowed to count readers who receive both print and digital editions of publications twice in the overall circulation total (see 2024’s coverage of women’s interest magazines for comparison). This has meant a significant boost in digital figures for many magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, and an overall digital circulation increase of 253.4% (versus 2024’s 17% increase). Digital circulations have also been …

Future leverages high visibility on ChatGPT by offering GEO as a service

Future leverages high visibility on ChatGPT by offering GEO as a service

Published by Sam Flores

Tom’s Guide and Techradar homepages on Friday 23 January 2026 Future has began offering LLM optimisation as a commercial product across its media brands. The move means Future offers tailored content campaigns for commercial partners which are aimed at boosting their visibility on generative AI-based services like ChatGPT. The move follows research that has found that Future brands – particularly Techradar – are among the most cited sources on various AI platforms. According to research by SEO software company Ahrefs, Future’s Techradar is the most cited publisher website domain globally on ChatGPT, closely followed by The Sun. The specialist websites and magazine publisher recently worked with Samsung to promote the launch of two new phone brands. And, according to Future SEO director Simon Glanville, the content campaign secured up to a 33% uplift in visibility on ChatGPT for the new Samsung products. Now the publisher has launched Future Optic, which is offering generative AI optimisation as part of the marketing mix offered across its portfolio of brands. The content in these campaigns is labelled as …

Why UK mag giants have teamed up to offer digital advertising at scale

Why UK mag giants have teamed up to offer digital advertising at scale

Published by Sam Flores

Atria logo surrounded by its partnered titles including Good Food, Empire, Time Out Out and Men’s Health. Picture: PPA Six magazine publishers have jointly launched an advertising marketplace to provide brands with more scale for their campaigns. Bauer, Hearst UK, Immediate Media, Time Out, Hello and Future teamed up to launch Atria. The launch is designed to enable advertisers to deliver “premium” programmatic ads at scale across a portfolio of titles, rather than arranging multiple deals. Revenue will be allocated based on the impressions served on each individual site for each campaign. Cath Waller, managing director of advertising at Immediate and chair of PPA Magnetic which brought publishers together for the initiative, said Atria “should drive incremental advertising spend” by simplifying the planning and buying process. Brands on which advertisers can roll out campaigns include Time Out, Hello!, Elle, Grazia, Good Housekeeping, Empire, Radio Times, Cosmopolitan, Four Four Two, Esquire, Car, Cycling Weekend and BBC Top Gear. Atria’s partnered publishers have a combined monthly audience of 33 million or “48% of the UK’s online population”, …

Future plans 45 editorial redundancies at titles including Techradar and Tom’s Guide

Future plans 45 editorial redundancies at titles including Techradar and Tom’s Guide

Published by Sam Flores

Tom’s Guide and Techradar homepages on Friday 23 January 2026 Future plc has proposed to make 45 editorial redundancies at its technology titles. Some 15 new roles are being created at the same time, making a net reduction in roles of 30. Press Gazette understands product reviews brand Tom’s Guide and news and reviews site Techradar are being hit particularly hard, and that staff in both the UK and US have been affected. Last week staff were told in an email, seen by Press Gazette, that a “significant restructure” of the editorial operation was being proposed and that the 15 new roles “better reflect our strategy going forward”. The email said: “We are living through unprecedented times in digital publishing, and the fundamental changes underway in both how our content is distributed and how it is consumed have left us with no option but to embark on a process today to reduce the number of roles in the team.” A Future spokesperson told Press Gazette: “We have made the difficult decision to reduce headcount in …

Future plc buys beauty and fashion brand Sheerluxe for £40m

Future plc buys beauty and fashion brand Sheerluxe for £40m

Published by Sam Flores

Magazine giant Future is attempting to grow its share of creator-led digital marketing spend by acquiring social-first publisher Sheerluxe. The £39.9m deal brings the total cost of Future Plc acquisitions to around £1.6bn over the last decade (roughly one third of the company’s current stock market valuation). UK-based Sheerluxe runs a fashion and beauty website, daily email newsletter (with 650,000 subscribers) and publishes video content directly to Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube. It also publishes a twice-weekly podcast. SheerLuxe makes money from e-commerce and by creating native marketing content for brands. Sheerluxe Ltd and Blush Talent MGMT Ltd have been bought by Future for £39.9m (with a further £40m dependent on performance). Sheerluxe generated £12.6m in revenue and £5.1m profit (EBITDA) in the year to September 2025. Future said of Sheerluxe: “Its Gen Z-skewed audience brings valuable new reach to the Future ecosystem, while strong credibility with established fashion and lifestyle consumers meaningfully complements Future’s global portfolio of specialist media brands attracting highly engaged, passionate audiences.” Launched in 2007 by Georgie Coleridge Cole, Sheerluxe now claims …