The 2026 Digital News Report from Oxford's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, released yesterday, June 15, documents a structural shift in how audiences across 48 countries find and consume news - one that is pulling people away from publisher-owned platforms and toward social media, video networks, and AI chatbots at a pace that has no clear floor.

The annual report, which has tracked global news consumption since 2012, is based on a YouGov survey of nearly 100,000 people across 48 countries. Its headline finding is stark: social media and video networks are now the primary news source in 30 of those 48 markets, ahead of news publishers' own websites and apps.

The structural decline of news websites

Publisher websites are not simply losing ground at the margins. According to the report's authors, news websites and apps saw a 5 percentage point decline in users between 2023 and 2026 - the only category tracked that lost users during that period. Every other platform, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, gained ground.

The pattern is sharpest among younger audiences. Respondents aged 18 to 34 are abandoning content on publishers' platforms even faster than they are dropping TV news, a medium already in well-documented decline. Among the data the report presents, the 18-24 age group shows a 6-percentage-point decline in news websites as a main source since 2021, compared with a 5-point decline in TV. The trend lines across all age groups run in the same direction.

This matters for the broader advertising ecosystem. News publishers have lost half their Google search traffic in two years, with web search falling from 51% to 27% of publisher referrals between 2023 and 2025. The RISJ report adds audience-side data to that picture: people are not simply arriving at news sites via different routes - they are arriving less often, or not at all.

Richard Fletcher, RISJ's director of research, characterizes the problem using adoption and retention data. TV news shows a 79% adoption rate - most people have tried it at some point - but only a 66% retention rate. Radio and newspapers fare worse: adoption at 53% and 49% respectively, with retention at 39% and 27%. According to the report, Fletcher writes that newspapers and radio "have lost most of their living user base." The distinction he draws is significant. "Television news has faded out of use for many people," he writes, "whereas newspapers and radio news may never have been part of the picture in the first place" for younger cohorts.

News websites and apps show high adoption - 71% - but retention rates 10 percentage points lower among younger people, mirroring the dynamics of TV news. Fletcher concludes that declines in publisher website use "are being driven by the loss of younger former users" rather than a failure to attract new ones.

Video moves to platforms, not publishers

The video investment that publishers have made over recent years is not translating into audience loyalty on their own properties. According to the report's authors, news organizations saw video consumption on their own sites and apps fall by 5 percentage points from 2025, and by 10 points since 2021. That decline is happening while more than 77% of global respondents consume online news video every week. The viewers are there - they are simply watching on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok rather than on broadcaster or publisher websites.

RISJ research fellow Craig T. Robertson draws a distinction within the video platforms themselves. While people encounter news videos across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, YouTube stands apart: it is the only platform where the majority of users actively seek out news rather than encountering it incidentally in a feed. On Instagram and TikTok, news arrives algorithmically. On YouTube, users search for it.

The generational dynamics around video format length also diverge from what might be expected. Just over half of 18-24-year-olds watching news videos on YouTube - 52% - say they watch longer news videos, defined as over 5 minutes, on a weekly basis. That figure is higher than the 41% of users aged 55 and over who do the same. Older YouTube users are more likely than younger ones to watch short-form news video: 69% of over-55 YouTube users watch videos under 6 minutes, compared with 60% of 18-24-year-olds. The report suggests this may reflect younger audiences' stronger preference for watching news rather than reading it.

Regional variation is pronounced. Thailand and Peru lead global consumption, with more than 80% of people in each country watching social news video weekly. Countries with historically strong upmarket newspaper and public media brands - the UK among them - show lower rates. The UK sits at 50% weekly social news video consumption, up from 40% in 2021, suggesting convergence toward global norms even in markets with established text-based news traditions.

YouTube's advertising revenues reached $10.3 billion in Q3 2025 alone. The RISJ data on intentional news-seeking behavior on YouTube, rather than passive feed discovery, has direct implications for how that inventory is valued by advertisers targeting news-adjacent audiences.

AI chatbots as a news source: the 10% threshold

One of the more closely watched metrics in this year's report is the proportion of respondents using AI chatbots for news. Globally, 10% said they had used AI chatbots - tools like ChatGPT or Gemini - for news in the past week, up from 7% in 2025. Among respondents under the age of 35, that figure rises to 16%.

The growth is not uniform. According to RISJ senior researcher Amy Ross Arguedas, Asia, Africa, and Latin America are driving the rise, with significant growth in Southern and Eastern Europe as well. In South Korea and Spain, chatbot usage for news has doubled since last year. The UK and the US have seen no increase over the same period.

Despite the rise in use, chatbots remain a supplementary rather than primary news source. Just 1% of respondents globally said chatbots were their main way of consuming news. Still, the behavioral patterns they generate are qualitatively different from those produced by search or social, and those differences carry direct implications for publishers and advertisers.

The click-through data is particularly notable. The report surveyed chatbot users across 27 markets about their navigation behavior. Only 4% said they "always" or "often" click through to sources provided by AI tools. By comparison, 19% of respondents said they click through from search results, and 17% from social media. Across all 27 markets surveyed, the click-through rate for AI was never higher than 8% - that peak occurring in South Korea. When chatbot users do click through, they report doing so primarily to verify information or to learn more about the cited publication, rather than to read additional detail in the story itself. On social and search, the most-cited reason for clicking through is to learn more about the news story.

Small publishers lost 60% of search traffic as AI reshapes the web, according to Chartbeat data from March 2026. The RISJ click-through findings suggest that AI chatbot referrals will not compensate for those losses. News sites draw the highest page-view volumes from AI platforms among all publisher categories, but readers arrive to verify a fact within a chatbot session rather than to read deeply.

Arguedas identifies a feature-driven logic to chatbot news use that differs from passive consumption. The most-cited motivation for using chatbots for news was asking follow-up questions, mentioned by 42% of chatbot news users. Summarizing complicated stories ranked second at 36%, followed by translating news from other languages at 33%. The pattern points toward what Arguedas describes as "a more expansive role that combines access with interpretation" - audiences are using AI to interrogate and evaluate information, not simply to receive headlines.

Facebook rebounds; Instagram takes young audiences

The social media landscape within news is not static. Facebook - which had seen use for news declining since 2024 after a long period at the top - is now showing what the report's authors describe as a "resurgence." Today, 43% of respondents say they use Facebook for news overall, with 31% reporting use in the past week. Instagram has become the single biggest social platform for news among 18-24-year-olds, with 42% of that cohort saying they used it for news in the past week.

The resurgence of Facebook for news carries context that the report does not shy away from. Globally, people who rely on social media and video networks as their main news source are more negative about coverage across six major story categories tracked by RISJ: the Ukraine conflict, inflation, Trump, the Middle East conflict, climate change, and immigration. The Spanish data the report highlights shows particularly sharp gaps: among social media users, net satisfaction with news coverage of the Ukraine conflict runs 21 points below TV news users, rising to 36 points below for immigration coverage.

Media leaders at 51 news organizations across the world expect an additional 43% traffic decline over the next three years, according to a Reuters Institute survey from January 2026. The 2026 Digital News Report audience data provides the demand-side evidence for why those projections are credible: the audiences are not pausing - they are migrating.

News creators fill gaps, but rarely replace traditional sources

News creators - individuals producing journalism-adjacent content outside traditional newsrooms - are now a weekly source for 27% of respondents across 48 countries. But the supplementary nature of that consumption is important: only 13% of respondents said creators meet most or all of their news needs.

RISJ senior research associate Nic Newman, who wrote this section, categorizes creator ecosystems into distinct types, noting "the emergence of 'hybrid journalist creator' models where existing radio and TV stars (and others) lean into creator approaches while remaining part of the traditional media ecosystem." Kenya shows the highest creator reliance in the dataset: 58% access creator content weekly, with 33% saying it meets all or most of their news needs. In the Netherlands, those figures fall to 9% and 2% respectively.

The pattern of creators supplementing rather than replacing traditional news holds even in markets where creator reliance is high. Even in Kenya, Peru, and the United States - countries the report identifies as having high creator dependence - only a minority say that most or all of their news needs are met by creators.

Paying for news: 17%, down from 18%

The proportion of respondents who paid for online news in the past year fell one point, from 18% in 2025 to 17% in 2026. In the US specifically, the figure fell by 4 percentage points, though the report's authors caution that sampling uncertainty may affect that reading.

The decline in willingness to pay sits alongside the broader audience fragmentation the report documents. Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch has described search falling from a majority of visits to just 25% of the company's total traffic, while confirming the company increased revenue in 2025 by leaning on subscriptions, events, and licensing. That model - direct audience relationships replacing referral dependency - is becoming the default strategy for publishers with strong brand equity. Whether it scales to mid-tier publishers remains an open question.

Impartial news retains plurality preference

The political dimension of news preference shows a notable finding: despite rising global polarization, 45% of respondents said they prefer news from sources without a particular point of view. That figure earns only a plurality, not a majority, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, who wrote this section, notes that the people who prefer ideologically aligned news are disproportionately engaged, politically active, and commercially valuable to publishers even while being a numerical minority.

The country-level variation is striking. In Germany, 64% prefer impartial news against 10% preferring news that agrees with them. In Nigeria, those figures are reversed: 22% prefer impartial news against 46% preferring aligned sources. Nielsen's regression analysis finds that countries with higher rates of social media use for news are significantly more likely to show higher preferences for news that aligns with existing views - though the relationship is imperfect.

What the findings mean for advertising

The shift in audience behavior the 2026 Digital News Report documents has operational consequences for media buyers. AI search upends publishers, with global digital subscriptions growing but fragmenting - a pattern the RISJ data corroborates from the audience side.

Publishers' own sites and apps remain the most direct environment for contextual advertising against news-engaged audiences. But their shrinking reach, combined with declining retention among younger users, narrows the inventory available through direct and programmatic publisher channels. The audiences that remain on publisher platforms tend to be older, more habitual, and in several markets, more likely to pay for news - characteristics that differentiate them commercially but reduce scale.

Google's AI summaries now intercept a significant share of clicks that once went to websites, and the RISJ chatbot click-through data shows AI tools generating even lower pass-through rates than search. For programmatic buyers whose inventory depends on publisher page views, the trajectory documented in this report - news audiences migrating to social platforms, video networks, and AI chatbots - is directly connected to the inventory contraction PPC Land has tracked throughout 2025 and into 2026.

Timeline

  • 2012 - RISJ publishes the first annual Digital News Report, establishing its ongoing tracking methodology
  • 2021 - RISJ data shows news websites and apps at their recent peak for share of audience use; social video on publisher platforms registers higher than 2026 levels
  • June 2025 - Platform payment structures encouraging AI-generated content gain widespread attention, documented in PPC Land's coverage of AI slop on social platforms
  • August 2025 - Google Discover documented as the dominant news traffic source for publishers, accounting for two-thirds of Google referrals
  • September 2025 - Heineken cross-media measurement study finds digital channels deliver 19.4 times more efficient reach than television; documented by PPC Land
  • November 2025 - Australia enacts the world's strictest social media ban for under-16s, covered by PPC Land
  • December 23, 2025 - NewzDash analysis confirms Google web search traffic to news publishers fell from 51% to 27% between 2023 and 2025; PPC Land reports on this shift
  • January 17, 2026 - RISJ survey of 280 media leaders finds executives expect an additional 43% traffic decline over the next three years; covered by PPC Land
  • February 4, 2026 - PPC Land reports Google AI summaries intercept 58% of clicks previously going to publisher websites
  • March 3, 2026 - PPC Land reports Conde Nast CEO describes search falling to 25% of company traffic as publisher subscription strategies take priority; full coverage here
  • April 18, 2026 - Chartbeat data shows small publishers lost 60% of search traffic over two years; covered by PPC Land
  • May 13, 2026 - Conde Nast CEO reaffirms subscription-over-traffic strategy in public interview; PPC Land coverage
  • June 15, 2026 - RISJ publishes the 2026 Digital News Report, based on a YouGov survey of nearly 100,000 people across 48 countries, finding social media surpasses publisher websites in 30 markets and chatbot news use at 10% globally

Summary

Who - The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford, working with YouGov and a team of researchers including Amy Ross Arguedas, Craig T. Robertson, Richard Fletcher, Nic Newman, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and lead author Jim Egan.

What - The 2026 Digital News Report, the fourteenth annual edition of the study, documents that social media and video networks now surpass publisher websites and apps as the primary news source in 30 of 48 surveyed markets. Chatbot use for news has risen from 7% to 10% globally, with 42% of chatbot users citing follow-up question capability as their main motivation. News organizations saw video consumption on their own platforms fall 5 points from 2025 and 10 points from 2021. Only 4% of chatbot users "always" or "often" click through to cited sources. The proportion paying for news fell from 18% in 2025 to 17% in 2026.

When - The report was released on June 15, 2026, based on survey fieldwork conducted in early 2026 via YouGov. RISJ has published the Digital News Report annually since 2012.

Where - The survey covers 48 countries across all regions. Growth in chatbot news use is concentrated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with significant increases in Southern and Eastern Europe. South Korea and Spain each saw chatbot news use double in a year. The UK and US showed no increase.

Why - The report matters for the marketing community because it documents the supply-side and demand-side forces reshaping where news audiences are found and how they are reached. Publisher websites - historically the primary environment for brand-safe contextual advertising adjacent to journalism - are losing users to platforms they do not control, at retention rates that are falling fastest among 18-34-year-olds. AI chatbots are generating click-through rates of 4% compared with 19% from search, compounding the traffic pressure on publisher inventory. The data has direct implications for programmatic buyers, media planners, and anyone whose advertising strategy depends on reaching news-engaged audiences through publisher channels.