The Sun doubles video’s share of digital revenue to 18% by betting on original programming
As Google’s AI Overviews threaten to chip away at publishers’ search traffic, The Sun is betting big on something harder to displace: original long-form video. Over the past nine months, video’s share of the publisher’s digital revenue has nearly doubled, climbing from 9 percent in January to 18 percent today, as advertisers shift spend into premium formats, according to the publisher.
A decent chunk of that surge comes straight from its Originals slate — The Sun’s bid to turn long-form digital video formats into signature franchises that keep viewers watching for longer, and later scale globally.
So far, 15 shows have launched since January, while seven new shows will launch over the next eight weeks. Approximately 50 people now work on Originals content, with headcount set to rise, according to The Sun’s director of video Jon Lloyd. In total, the shows have generated more than 113 million views across platforms, including YouTube, in the last eight months, he said.
Of the 18 percent video growth, 5 percent is Originals content, according to Owen Griffiths, commercial revenue director at The Sun. While The Sun’s parent News Corp doesn’t break out title-specific ad revenues, total revenue for The Sun in 2024 was £296.3 million ($404 million).
“We’ve started to attract new clients that have never used us in a digital capacity before [for Originals integrated sponsorships], like M&S and Card Factory,” said Griffiths. “It’s a significant amount of growth from a standing start and points to where we’re going in future,” he said.
Finding the right flexible formats
If the last pivot to video (circa 2016-2018) was about chasing platform algorithms, this latest wave is about building sponsor-integrated, editorially rooted formats that can travel across platforms and stand up even as AI and search reshape traffic flows.
The publisher has focused on two specific content verticals for Originals commissioning: sports and Fabulous — its women’s fashion, beauty and lifestyle brand. To meet rising demand for deeper advertiser integration into brand-safe content, the news brand has been restructuring its channels across YouTube and its other social channels like TikTok to separate harder news from sponsor-friendly content, according to Lloyd.
“There are three things it [Originals shows] has to hit: it’s got to be editorially spot on for our viewers, and [help] build massively loyal communities; be brand safe and have commercial viability. And it’s got to be built for integration — that bit is crucial now,” said Lloyd.
Format franchises are being built in a flexible, modular way so that brands can be easily integrated into the conversations and topics covered, stressed Lloyd.
Six sponsors have helped monetize six of the 15 Originals shows produced so far, including its weekly video podcast Fabulous’ “No Parental Guidance,” which has attracted 7 million viewers and is sponsored by Card Factory.
The show is hosted by mom influencers Louise Boyce and Hannah East, who share candid and humorous takes on some of the unvarnished truths about parenting. It features guest stars, like TV presenter Davina McCall, who will feature in next week’s episode, and fan feedback and commentary often determine the topics for the next shows.
The Fabulous brand taps external talent and influencers for about 75% of its content, while for sport, it’s more 70 percent internal staff, added Lloyd.
From the sports slate: “From The Sportdesk,” is a set of women’s rugby specials backed by the National Lottery operator, and “No Gloves Lost & Split Decision” is its boxing analysis franchise, now sponsored by sports entertainment platform DAZN.
The goal is to use its editorial teams’ topic expertise to build engaged communities around these shows, which can then be commercialized.
“Making video in isolation doesn’t make sense at The Sun,” said Lloyd. More than 90% of the 250 daily-produced videos, including Originals, have accompanying articles with the video embedded, he said. “Then we’ve got 155 channels across nine platforms, where we can spread it out, which all drive back to the hero product, which is the video, but it’s also helping the journalism,” said Lloyd. The Sun claims a total 45 million subscribers across 190 channels in total.
Laura Smith, digital director at EssenceMediacom, said if it has advertiser clients whose audience aligns with The Sun’s, then brand integrations become a compelling offering, given they offer a “deeper and more contextual connection” with an audience than adjacent pre-rolls or mid-rolls. “In a market where the majority of brand integrations are either costly through broadcast suppliers or via UGC/influencers, this stands out as a unique way to promote our client’s products and services through an established and trusted brand,” she said.
The Sun is the largest UK newspaper on YouTube with 6 million subscribers, according to Enders Analysis’ YouTube and Journalism: the News Frontier Report published in February. This will have been aided by two factors: first mover advantage (The Sun’s main channel was established in 2007, vs the Mail in 2012 or the Guardian in late 2014); and its upload frequency — the Sun posted 12 times a day in the period Enders reviewed the publisher, mostly focused on war in Ukraine, UK poliitcs, crime footage and the British royal family. Originals marks its concerted push to broaden into other genres for video, said Enders’ senior research analyst Abi Watson.
“With declining visibility in search, social video is going to become a more important touchpoint,” said Watson. “In June, roughly a third of the keywords the Sun ranked for in Sistrix’s dataset triggered a Google AI Overview, and that figure has likely gone up since,” she said.
North star in AI-driven era: CTV and video growth and deeper reader engagement
Sun Originals’ early commercial traction arrives at a moment when publishers’ search referrals are weakening under Google’s AI Overviews and rival AI engines. In its Q1 2025 earnings results, News UK parent shared that The Sun‘s digital offering saw global monthly unique users drop 40% year over year to 80 million in September 2024, from 134 million a year earlier. It didn’t cite the direct cause.
The result: publishers are being more assertive about prioritizing their owned and operated ecosystems and deepening reader engagement. “If you think about the downgrades everyone is seeing in referral traffic, both generally, from the way Google and Meta treat news content, to the coming of AI search and what that could mean for how people discover content, having our own ecosystem will be important,” added Griffiths. That means leaning particularly into innovation on its own app environment, he added.
For the time being, however, scale is still critical for its advertisers, making its reach across YouTube and other social viewing platforms a critical part of its content and revenue strategy.
The publisher will launch five new YouTube channels in the next few months, separating different sports into separate channels, for example, U.S. sports and specific Premier League football club channels. And it plans to launch additional channels under the family and parenting categories.
The Sun claims that 40 percent of its overall views for Originals have come via connected TVs. That equates to 600,000 hours out of 1.4 million hours of Originals content, per the publisher.
In contrast to open web display, video and CTV ad spend have emerged as bright spots for publishers. In the UK, 64% of online display spend now goes to video, up from 51% five years ago, according to the IAB’s Digital Ad Spend report in April. And forecasts suggest CTV advertising could reach £2.94 billion ($4 billion) by 2028 based on current rates, per IAB data. In the US, CTV video spend grew 18% year-over-year in 2024 to $64 billion, per the IAB’s 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy report.
“If you want to look at an ultimate ambition for us, it would be to move further and further into the CTV space and potentially have our own presence there,” said Griffiths.
