‘Best ever revenue’: The Daily Aus expands offering
Online youth news service The Daily Aus has diversified its offerings with two new verticals, a new video series, and a move into the live event space.
Announced at its inaugural upfront event last week, the indie media brand unveiled its plans for the year ahead, doubling down on the formats where young people “are already consuming content”.
Zara Seidler, co-founder of The Daily Aus, told Mumbrella the event was an “amazing” chance for the team to “see the real life impact of the work we do”.
“Having the opportunity to meet and engage with the people that have made our company possible was a really validating and gratifying things to have happen.”
While Seidler dodged questions about TDA’s profitability because “we’re in the middle of quarter and it’s difficult to tell”, she said The Daily Aus is on track for “another year of our best ever revenue”.
“We’re in a really strong position, we are here to stay,” she told Mumbrella. “Our team is growing, our offering is growing, our audience is growing, so we’re absolutely heading in the right direction.”
When asked to elaborate, she said TDA’s “impact” on young Australians in 2024 grew significantly, mostly through the launch of two new newsletters — TDA Sports and TDA Good News — and increased engagement of its podcast.
The need for diversification came as a response to uncertainty around the future of news on Meta’s platforms – the core of TDA’s business model.
As TDA has previously told Mumbrella, it was important to the publisher to “build out [a] direct relationship” with its audience in the form of newsletters and owned media, to decrease its reliance on Meta.
While Seidler said the business will “always be social-first”, the model is not necessarily strictly Instagram-first.
“What that social looks like is fairly agnostic,” she said. “If Instagram is where young people will continue to be and spend their time, then we want to meet them there… But [the business model] is also about how we bring them down the funnel and introduce them to our other products.”
Live events
After a successful breakfast event earlier this month, TDA will venture further into the live event space in 2025.
This year will see more Good News Brews breakfast events, more Politics in the Pub, and a move to industry-specific networking events.
“Where possible and where feasible”, TDA will run only free events, with sponsorship-driven event curation.
“Say, for example, there was a networking event that we hosted for, hypothetically, young women in the finance space. We’d try to find the right partner to meet that opportunity.”
TDA Finance
One of the new newsletters set to launch is on finance and economics, which Seidler said she is “most excited for”.
As Australia prepares for the upcoming Federal Election, and people continue to battle the cost-of-living crisis, she said providing accessible journalism and explanations on economics is crucial, simply saying it is about “building an ecosystem” for young people.
“We see TDA’s role as setting that foundation of information — reliable, accurate, accessible information — for young people to then go off and navigate the very complicated economic world that we find ourselves in,” Seidler told Mumbrella.
“We’re also making sure we’re speaking across to them, not down to them.”
When expanding on the point of not speaking down to the audience, she said the “simple answer” is that TDA is “on the same level” as its audience.
“Traditionally when you’ve seen outlets trying to engage young people, its execs in a room coming up with a plan on how young people will care about a story. But with us, our newsroom is made up of young people who inherently understand how to communicate to their peers.”
TDA Culture
TDA will also launch a culture vertical this year, and while Seidler admitted that the space is crowded with competition from the likes of fellow youth publishers Punkee and Pedestrian Group, she said TDA will have a point of difference in how it approaches its coverage.
“We’re not about opinion, we’re not about hot takes,” she said. “Again, similarly to the finance vertical, we’ll break down the big stories and given people that foundation of knowledge.”
TDA Culture will share the “facts of the stories”, rather than provide commentary like Punkee or Pedestrian often do.
“It’s the straight reporting… The smart, explanatory journalism.”
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Also launching in 2025 is a new video series, where TDA will partner with a different brand or organisation each episode, inviting someone from that business to answer a set of questions about their career.
Designed to help young people who feel lost or unsure about their careers, the series will highlight “different, unorthodox career paths”.
“We know our audience engages with video, and this feels like a really big value add,” Seidler said.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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