A little over a year ago we announced Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, to readers and publishers all around the world. Our goal is to help publishers more deeply engage with their readers and to help readers find, follow and support the news organizations covering the issues that matter to them. One year in, we continue to learn, update and expand the product, and we’ve seen strong, steady numbers both in terms of the number of publishers signing on for the product and how readers are interacting with the content.
Since News Showcase launched in October 2020, we’ve signed deals with more than 1,000 news publications around the world and have launched in more than a dozen countries: India, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Austria, the U.K., Australia, Czechia, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, and just a few weeks ago we launched in Canada and Ireland. More than 90% of the publications that are part of News Showcase represent local or community news. Local news is an essential way for readers to connect to their communities and ensure they get the news that impacts their day-to-day lives.
Flags of the countries where News Showcase has been launched so far
We know how hard it can be to keep on top of the news. With News Showcase, readers see what stories key publications think are worth highlighting and get more insight directly from those publishers through curated panels. We give publishers a variety of News Showcase panel templates to use so they can give additional context to stories, add related articles, timelines and more. The panels give news publishers more direct control of their presentation and branding, helping them be more visible to their dedicated readers and to those who are just discovering them.
Examples of how some of our News Showcase partners around the world will appear in the product
News Showcase panels can appear across Google, currently on News and Discover, and direct readers to the full articles on publishers’ websites, helping them deepen their relationships with readers. In addition to the revenue that comes directly from these more-engaged readers, participating publishers will receive monthly licensing payments from Google.
“As a regional publisher in south and east Germany, a key objective for us is to expand our digital presence and reach to audiences,” says Daniel Torka, member of the executive board of NPG (Südwest Presse), a daily regional newspaper. “Using News Showcase has allowed us to more deeply engage our readers on important stories and give us more opportunities to tell stories differently.”
“I always work to increase the number of our users, to reach a wider audience,” says Clara Inés Araújo, editor in chief of El Pilón, a regional newspaper in Colombia. “For this, Google News Showcase has been a strategic ally. With nice designs, readers feel closer to our stories. We provide them with organized information about what is happening in our region and the country. The future is about working together, and Google News Showcase is a great example.”
“Local newspapers create essential reporting for their communities,” says Kobe Shimbun, a local newspaper in Japan that covers Hyogo Prefecture. “However, in the digital era, we need to build more touch points for us to be discovered by those readers. Google News Showcase provides us a new way for readers to find the articles they need, and enables us to strengthen our relationships with them.”
“Le Devoir is a proud partner of Google News Showcase. Google’s assistance and tools are critical in Le Devoir’s strategy to build a digital audience,” says Brian Myles, editor of Le Devoir, a Quebec-based independent news publisher. “We rely mainly on digital subscriptions and our business model is sustainable. In this regard, Google News Showcase fits perfectly with our current efforts to build a larger community of readers. This partnership will bring us a step forward in our digital transformation, while delivering our trusted and fact-based brand of independent journalism to a wider audience.”
One year in, we’re seeing robust numbers from News Showcase that indicate both publishers and readers are getting value from the quality curated content found in the product.
To start, participating publishers have created over one million News Showcase panels to date. And readers clearly like what they see. People have tapped the Follow button on News Showcase panels over 1.5 million times, showing they’re looking for more content from their favorite publishers or ones they have just discovered. By following a news organization on News Showcase, readers are ensuring that they get to see regular updates from these publishers every time they open Google News.
To further strengthen these relationships, we offer News Showcase readers the ability to read expanded access to select content from publishers. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles, encouraging them to learn more about the publication — and potentially subscribe. Combined together, these features and numbers show that the product is supporting news organizations’ mission of reaching readers and helping to bring a deeper engagement.
We’re continuing to work with news organizations to learn more about how people engage with News Showcase to ensure we’re delivering on our long-term goal of strengthening the relationship between readers and publishers.
News Showcase is just one of our investments in our ongoing commitment to support journalism around the world. Through both our services and direct funding of news organizations, Google is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of news. With the Google News Initiative, we offer training in digital skills and capabilities, programs like GNI Startups Lab and the GNI Digital Growth Program to accelerate small and mid-sized news organizations’ business growth, and products like News Consumer Insights and Subscribe with Google to help publishers understand their audiences and grow reader revenue. Since we launched the GNI in 2018, we’ve worked with more than 7,000 news partners in over 120 countries and territories and trained more than 450,000 journalists in 70 countries. More details on our GNI work over the past three years is available in our impact report.
Alongside governments, other companies and civic society, we’re dedicated to continuing to find ways to engage readers with journalism that matters to them and supporting the sustainability of the news industry around the world.
