Nub News expects to reach its first profit this year after cutting back on the number of towns it covers and building up its premium advertising offering.
The digital-only UK hyperlocal news publisher, which launched in September 2018, is now active in 25 towns through websites, weekly newsletters and an overall Nub News app.
Nub News is forecast to make a profit of £7,500 in 2026, which founder Karl Hancock put down to changing its advertising approach and switching from expansion to sustainable growth in fewer locations.
The publisher peaked at around 42 towns in the UK in 2024 before closing 17 locations over the following 18 months.
“We’ve learned a lot when we launch in towns now, and we’ve got a bible and a manifesto,” Hancock said. “We’ve got to get the time right, and we’ve got to get the journalists right.”
Today Nub News reaches one million monthly unique users across its active towns, according to Hancock, while its most recent launch in Solihull in April gained 2,000 Facebook followers in its first week.
Nub News has a team of 25 full-time staff, including six on the sales and tech teams based in Crewe.
This means it is operating in more towns than it has journalists, but this ratio is shifting to become more one-to-one.
“The mistake I made in the past really was thinking we could go into any town despite the size, which is just not true,” said Hancock.
“The model going forward will always be one town per one journalist, and that journalist has to live in the town. There are certain legacy towns where we’ve had one journalist for two towns, or even one journalist for three towns, and it hasn’t worked in the past. We’ve still got a few of them where we’ve got more towns than journalists, but going forward, we’d never ask a journalist to do two towns. It’s got to be one and one.”
After its 2020 launch Crewe proved to be a successful example of the Nub News template, Hancock said.
“We discovered – probably by accident – that Crewe really took off, a town of 75,000. The journalist was really good, and we get 50,000 uniques in Crewe every week now – not every month, every week. We properly dominate the news in Crewe.”
Hancock realised Nub News needs a town to be a “certain size” with a competitive local business market.
“There needs to be competition between accountants, estate agents, venues, etc. If there’s no competition then there’s no reason for them to advertise.”
The publisher now applies what it calls the “Crewe template” in other towns, going on to replicate this in Stafford, Stoke, Chester, Solihull and Stockport.
Nub News also prefers to launch in towns with weak existing coverage – Hancock said Crewe did not previously have any dedicated local news reporters, so it was a “news desert” – and being near geographically to other Nub News
“We try to do it close to existing towns so there can be synergies between councils… but also sponsors and partners are close as well,” he said, adding it means Nub News journalists can also help each other out when needed.
Hiring the right journalists has also proved to be crucial, said Hancock.
“If you want a job as a local journalist you have to adapt,” he said, adding 30% of the role is social media, working with partners and photography. “If you don’t have that 30%, we’re not going to succeed.”
The journalists are required to write around 25 stories a week, with some of these simple press release stories.
Nub News founder attributes reaching profit to three key changes
Reaching the point of profitability has been due to three strategic changes, said Hancock.
Its first change was downsizing its operations because some towns were not attracting enough advertising revenue.
The second change was its approach to advertising: Hancock had an “epiphany” 18 months ago after spotting that around 80% of its advertising customers were approaching Nub News because of improved website banners and word of mouth, rather than being won over with cold calling.
Hancock said the sales team adapted to focus on incoming enquiries and “spend time looking after those clients”.
“We made our partnership pages better. So we shout from the rooftops who we partner with, because if we didn’t partner with those local businesses, local news wouldn’t exist in those towns.”
The third change, said Hancock, is “the Trojan Horse”: premium-tier advertising.
While businesses can still appear for free in Nub News’ round-up lifestyle pages dedicated to events and shopping (Shop Local and What’s On), advertisers can now pay “premium prices” to receive priority placement or social media promotion.
Nub News has also just launched a “prize draw” in Crewe, which Hancock said “really embeds us in a town” and brings the business closer to local advertising partners.
“Thousands of people play it, and it might add a little bit of revenue at the bottom line as well. But it just makes sure we got more and more opportunity to be in that town.”
Nub News is now looking to generate further revenue by allowing businesses to advertise offers and discounts through the site for a fee.
Ad-free subscriptions and other premium experiences adding to revenue pot
Nub News expects to hit revenue of £740,000 in the year to 30 September 2026, up 30% year on year, said Hancock.
It gets 30% of its revenue from its five largest towns: Crewe (9%), Macclesfield (6%), Kenilworth (7%) and Thurrock and Stockport – both 5%.
Hancock owns around 25% of the company, while the majority shareholder (57%) is Bill Holmes, the owner of Crewe-based fuel card provider Radius.
Around 75% of Nub News revenue comes from local business partners, with the remaining 25% from subscriptions, Shop Local and What’s On premium advertising, and Facebook monetisation.
The publisher has around 650 paying subscribers, contributing £2.99, £4.99 or £9.99 a month for an ad-free experience as launched a year ago.
“All of those are adding to the revenues, which we didn’t have 18 months ago. But at the same time, our partner revenue is growing as well,” said Hancock.
Local business partners can buy ads as banners or direct-sold ads in its dedicated pages such as “Property of the Week” (Nub News has around 20 estate agent partners).
“What we’re trying to do is replicate what the old newspaper used to be 25 years ago,” said Hancock, comparing its dedicated ad pages to newspaper pull-out pages for sections like motor, property and jobs.
Hancock said the title needs between £30,000 and £40,000 of advertising revenue to operate in each town.
Nub News has worked out a formula on how to best partner with local businesses such as estate agents, care homes and motor dealers.
A lot of these businesses will be competing with “three or four” similar businesses in the towns, and Nub News will offer an exclusive partnership to one.
Establishing partnerships in towns gives Nub News the potential to expand into neighbouring towns lacking news coverage down the line, Hancock said.
App launch to help Nub News ‘own our own customers’
Traffic to Nub News comes roughly equally from Facebook, Google (Discover and search) and direct.
Hancock acknowledged that the brand “wouldn’t exist” without the big tech platforms and said he is “pro-Facebook, pro-Google”.
Google traffic to Nub News is currently down 20% from its July-August peak in 2025 but he said is not worried about Google Zero, which refers to industry fears around referral traffic from the search giant plummeting to nothing due to AI summaries and other platform changes.
[Read more: Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027]
Nonetheless Nub News has built an app, which went live in June, to help lessen its reliance on the big tech platforms.
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of Facebook and Google. I want to own our own customers,” said Hancock.
He added: “There’s no doubt that Google and Facebook dominate, and we are at the mercy of their algorithms, which means that I don’t have control of my own company, whereas if I have an app, it’s just another way, another distribution for our customers.”
Nub News has improved its Facebook strategy, leading to a “marginal” increase in revenue according to Hancock.
Journalists now focus on short-form vertical videos, which has helped increase Facebook followers across all pages from 210,000 in January 2025 to 274,000 today.
Hancock said the publisher appeals to the Google Discover and Facebook algorithms with original photos attached to articles and by producing “good quality, local, original journalism”, as the platforms do not favour clickbait or broad news content.
[Read more: Reach moves away from ‘volume’ as traffic, revenue and share price plunge]
Looking ahead, Hancock said Nub News has identified around 50 towns to launch in but no set timeline.
However, “I’d be disappointed if we’re not at 75 towns within three years,” he admitted.
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