Apple News Plus appears to still be a struggle for publishers on the platform.
As reported by the Press Gazette, growth appears to be slowing on Apple News Plus, the company's news aggregation service that, in addition to offering access to a number of news publications, also offers access to hundreds of magazines.
According to new data provided by the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), the top 25 publications on Apple New Plus had a combined circulation of 1,333,088 in the first half of 2022. While that is up 6% year-over-year when compared to the first half of 2021, it is down 18% when looking at the second half of 2021.
Apple News Plus' top publications show a mixed bag in terms of growth or decline. People, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, and Popular Mechanics have all experienced declines on the platform over the last year. People, which is also the most popular publication on Apple News Plus, saw its readership drop a whopping 36% over the period.
Men's Health, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, Women's Health, and Wired have all experienced growth on the platform over the last year. Esquire, which currently ranks seventh in the rankings, experienced over 112% growth between 2021 and 2022.
Apple News Plus has struggled for the company
Apple News Plus has had a slow road after its initial launch years ago and has even lost some of the publishers that were on the platform at one time. The most notable publisher to leave Apple News is likely The New York Times. The company had announced back in 2020 that it would be abandoning its presence on the platform.
At the time, the Chief Operating Officer of the company said that "core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers and the nature of our business rules ... Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters."
The service costs users $9.99 per month or is also available as part of the Apple One Premier subscription bundle service for $32.95 per month.
