Digital subscriber revenue is expected to cover the costs of Le Monde’s entire editorial staff within the next two years, according to chief executive Louis Dreyfus.
The French daily newspaper and online newsbrand ended 2024 with 660,000 subscribers, of which 580,000 were digital.
Most are in its core French market but it has in the past two years put effort into international English-language expansion which Dreyfus told Press Gazette has reached 12,000 subscribers, mainly in the US and UK.
In 2022 Le Monde set a target of reaching one million subscribers by the end of 2025.
Just over three-quarters (77%) of Le Monde’s revenues are now coming from paying readers with more than half of the total from subscriptions, Dreyfus said.
Le Monde has been profitable for the past nine years.
Dreyfus told Press Gazette that when he joined Le Monde 14 years ago, it had 310 staff journalists and that today it has more than 560.
He said that in 2024 digital subscriptions revenues amounted to €63m (around £53m) and the total cost of editorial staff was €72m (£61m). “I would say that in the next two years, the work of our editorial staff will be fully financed by digital subscriptions, which is important.”
Dreyfus said this showed that at Le Monde, “the more you invest in the staff, the more you’re able to produce quality and exclusive content, the more people find reasons to pay for the content”.
He added that in recent years the gap has grown “between the few quality media who have been able to invest in content and the rest of the market”.
Dreyfus claimed that Le Monde has been seeing “continuous growth of our digital subscription to a point today that when there is 100 new digital subscribers on the French market, 70 of them are coming to Le Monde and the rest of the market has to share the 30%”.
Le Monde’s early mover advantage
He said Le Monde dominates the French market for three reasons: it was the first major player to choose a paid digital subscription model, it has continued to invest in editorial staff as other publishers made cuts, and it chose not to join digital newsstand bundles like Cafeyn and Readly that group access to participating newspapers and magazines under one subscription fee.
“We thought from the beginning that it was not good for publishers in terms of perception and in terms of revenues, and it was my first executive decision when I arrived at Le Monde to refuse to join those digital newsstands. Fourteen years later, Le Monde is the French media with the largest portfolio of digital subscribers with… the largest revenues per subscribers.”
Subscriber growth has not come from cut-price offers, Dreyfus said, but from cleverly promoting content to subscribers that they had not yet consumed in order “to give them a better understanding of the value of the subscription”.
Dreyfus also attributed audience growth at Le Monde in part to investment in non-news content, including a new format called “intimacy” focused on issues surrounding relationships and friendships which is attracting new readers – often younger and more likely to be women. He said these new arrivals to Le Monde frequently start to consume as much content as a traditional subscriber in legacy areas like international politics.
Last year’s Paris Olympics did not give Le Monde the major boost it had hoped for, but Dreyfus said subscriber growth has come instead from the political turmoil in France that has seen four governments in the past 12 months and the US presidential election.
Dreyfus said investment in content for social platforms, primarily Snapchat, Tiktok and Youtube, has similarly helped Le Monde initiate relationships with new audiences who move to its core content and pay to subscribe after two or three years. “So that has been a nice surprise for us over the past few years.”
Last year, coinciding with Le Monde’s 80th anniversary, the news publisher changed ownership into the hands of a non-profit foundation created to protect its independence.
Dreyfus said Le Monde now only has two shareholders – the foundation and its employees – none of whom can finance it. This means the change was only possible because its previous shareholders invested in the recovery and turnaround of the business and now it is profitable and therefore self-financing.
“At a time when there is so much information available for free on digital, if you want to make people pay for your content, you need to reassure them very strongly that you are independent.”
Le Monde’s other revenue streams: Advertising, licensing, events
Despite the focus on subscribers, Dreyfus said advertising “remains important” for Le Monde which is why they are “adamant” about keeping advertising in subscriber-only content unlike some publishers that choose to make ad-free or ad-light reading a subscriber perk.
“We think that our partner advertisers need to be able to reach this audience.”
He said the second half of 2024 had been a tough advertising market in France due to the political turmoil and “the difficult of the Chinese economy” but that he expects growth in 2025.
This is why they plan to launch in March a digital international English-language edition of Le Monde’s weekly magazine supplement M. The English version will be a weekly newsletter and appear twice in print in 2025 during the March and September fashion weeks because Dreyfus said they believe there is a market among both readers and advertisers.
But the biggest challenge in advertising, Dreyfus believes, is marketers choosing to use platforms instead of trusted publishers – as well as their largely debunked concerns about brand safety that lead to the restriction of advertising in news contexts.
He referred to a “a tendency that we have seen of major advertisers” to invest a lot in platforms like Facebook and X “without any issue on the quality of the environment.
“I would expect those major advertisers to be more attentive of the evolution of the platforms, with the lack of moderation, the violence of the content you can find, and maybe to come back and to understand that they should promote more quality environments and as such Le Monde, Le Figaro are very good examples.”
He added that publishers like Le Monde need to “better work” with advertisers in response to blocklists stopping ad campaigns running alongside any stories with words (in English) like “shooting” or “attack” – both of which could hit football content as well as hard news.
“I do understand, but if it’s a major concern for them… I don’t see why they are putting so much investment on those platforms where you have no guarantee whatsoever on the content.”
Le Monde last year became the first – and so far only – French media group to have signed a partnership with OpenAI meaning its content is surfaced in response to prompts with attribution and “enhanced links” and it can also be used in training for ChatGPT.
“For us in the future, it will be a way to reach an audience, a younger audience, that will use more and more AI tools to discover news. So we need to be referenced on these tools, and our partnership with OpenAI, I think, can help us a lot.”
Asked if he was concerned that users would no longer need to click through to news websites if they get enough information from the likes of ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews, Dreyfus said: “To stay in our historic parameter and think this revolution will move around us but won’t touch us would be very naive. I think we need to be active in this revolution.
“Considering the size of those players, we cannot compete against those players. So we need to find ways to reach a partnership with those players, and for that we are quite proud and happy to have signed with OpenAI.” He added that the licensing revenue from the OpenAI deal is “very significant” for Le Monde.
Another growing revenue stream is events. Last year saw the launch of an event linked to the M lifestyle supplement, with more than 5,000 people attending over three days. Dreyfus said the event was “highly profitable” and another is expected to follow in late 2025 or early 2026.
Le Monde has also been developing masterclasses led by its journalists on topics like the evolution of Russia over the past 20 years and the presidential election with people paying to attend either in-person or online. Dreyfus said this is also “growing quite rapidly”.
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