A US publisher that says its mission is to share unbiased news and “straight facts” has seen “tremendous” growth in response to an app relaunch as it aims to build a direct daily habit in the age of AI summaries.
Straight Arrow News relaunched its app at the end of April and has seen a 50% growth in app page views since, chief revenue officer Ken Shapiro told Press Gazette.
The app relaunch has also, Shapiro said, led to 26% growth in sessions per users and 27% growth in engaged time per user.
SAN was launched in 2021 by Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of financial services company TD Ameritrade.
Its goal is to be people’s first source for the news before they move on to other publishers that may lean one way or the other politically.
“Start with us, then go to whatever news network you want – everyone leans one way or the other,” Shapiro said. “But you get the baseline from us.”
The SAN app was redesigned with a “thesis of ‘do you want to read it, watch it, or listen to it?’” said Shapiro, formerly chief revenue officer of Morning Brew. This means they ultimately want every piece of content to be available to consume in each of these three ways.
In June the app’s page views were up 1,170% year on year compared to June 2024 while active users increased by 700%.
Shapiro said the app’s “tremendous” growth was partly due to being “built for the digital age”.
Times head of digital Edward Roussel told Press Gazette this month that the newsbrand’s subscribers prefer the app, consuming more content, driven by notifications, page turning improving the flow of reading, and extra choice such as puzzles.
“We’re trying to make focus on our app being a daily habit for people,” Shapiro said. “If people are relying on Google AI summaries for their news, the flow of traffic to your site is getting more challenging as we speak.
“We’re not tied to a legacy platform – such as a newspaper brand or cable news network – so we’re really focused on growing a loyal app user audience. We understand who our audience are.
“It’s important for people to type in SAN.com for us, and that’s something we’re constantly tracking and metrics that have consistently grown each month.”
[Read more: AI Overviews cutting publisher clickthrough rates by 50%, new report finds]
SAN’s app audience is largely made up of younger visitors, with 18 to 34-year-olds visiting the platform a “common theme”, Shapiro said, “whereas the website is a bit older.”
Overall SAN is used by “a young, affluent audience that’s really busy,” he continued. “It’s for people who go out to dinner and talk to their friends about what’s happening, rather than listening to some podcaster who is inherently biased.”
Straight Arrow News advertising-focused business model
He added that SAN’s priority is to reach a “core audience that understands our value proposition”, with this being important to establish before any changes are made to the business model.
SAN currently does not charge for content and has until now monetised through programmatic advertising. It has now started rolling out a new type of native website advertising, with the app set to follow in around a month, that merges its brand style with adverts.
“We want readers to come back to us for news, so we want to use an interesting medium of advertising,” Shapiro said.
“We’re doing this with facts – so companies can advertise themselves using facts about their products. It’s similar to how we have text cards on our home page to provide news content, and these [advertising] fact cards could bring advertisers to our environment.”
The aim is not to “overwhelm” the audience, but to create “the right balance so our audience understands our value proposition”.
“Advertisers can get people that are very engaged.”
Growing revenue in 2026: ‘You can’t do it all at once’
Shapiro said more revenue streams will likely be added in the next year or so.
“We’re a relatively small company, so it’s all about the prioritisation. You can’t do it all at once – get the simple advertising done first. Maybe we’ll go into events and data in 2026.”
Subscription packages are also a feature that will be looked into next year, but “there won’t be anything in 2025 just yet”.
“We’re planning on this for 2026, and lots of work would go into that,” he said. “We want to make sure the product is subscription-worthy and [something] everyone is willing to pay for.
“I want people to get their news from us – it’s easier said than done, but everyone I speak to is frustrated with the news environment. They get their news in so many ways now, but people want to understand the news.”
He added SAN has received “great feedback”, but “it takes a while to build a brand new brand”.
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