Why Quality Publishers Are Stronger Together: How Alliances Like Ozone Boost Ad Revenue
- News publishers globally capture approximately $15.7 billion of a $1 trillion global digital advertising market, according to the World Press Trends report.
- The scale of the digital ad market dwarfs the current revenue share of news organizations.
- Launched in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Reach plc, Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian, and News UK, Ozone has expanded its operations into Europe and the United...
News publishers globally capture approximately $15.7 billion of a $1 trillion global digital advertising market, according to the World Press Trends report. To combat this disparity, publishing alliances like Ozone and France’s 366 are organizing media companies to aggregate inventory and data to reclaim value from the broader technology ecosystem.
The scale of the digital ad market dwarfs the current revenue share of news organizations. In the United States alone, digital advertising reached nearly $300 billion last year, based on the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2025. The World Press Trends report indicates that the $15.7 billion captured by publishers represents a small percentage of the total global spend.
Ozone’s Expansion and Market Strategy
Launched in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Reach plc, Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian, and News UK, Ozone has expanded its operations into Europe and the United States. Danny Spears, the Chief Operating Officer of Ozone, stated during the World News Media Congress 2026 that the U.S. is currently the organization’s largest market.
Ozone has established partnerships with 75 of the world’s largest media firms. These include the BBC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Deutsche Welle, Warner Bros., and People Inc.
The alliance focuses on reducing friction for marketers who want to invest in journalism at scale. According to Spears, the model ensures publishers are rewarded for their data assets and inventory while they maintain control over their first-party audience.
Addressing Value Extraction in the Tech Ecosystem
The formation of these alliances stems from a belief that the current technology ecosystem is designed to systematically extract value from the publishing industry. Spears told World News Media Congress participants that the central economic challenge is whether publishers retain the value they create or if that value ends up with third parties.
Quality publishers are stronger together. And that was against the backdrop of a technology ecosystem, which has been constructed to systematically extract value from the publishing industry – which is a problem that is too large for any individual publisher to tackle alone.
Danny Spears, Chief Operating Officer of Ozone
Spears argued that the industry is at a crossroads where the decisions made by business leaders will determine the future of the sector, citing a balance between significant opportunity and “huge jeopardy.”
Innovation via Ozone Labs
To address emerging industry issues, the alliance created Ozone Labs. This research and innovation vehicle operates separately from Ozone’s core business because the problems it investigates are too early for standard product development but too consequential to ignore.
Ozone Labs conducts two types of initiatives to drive industry movement:
- Short-term experiments: These include “hack days” conducted with individual publishers and marketers.
- Long-term experiments: These focus on the future direction of the industry, with the resulting findings published to the public.
The goal of these tools is to help publishers address information asymmetry. Spears emphasized that industry-level challenges are too large for any single publisher to solve independently, necessitating a unified approach to move the industry forward.