PinkNews, the multi-award-winning LGBTQ+ led publisher, has been honoured as the fastest-growing privately-owned media business in Britain by the Sunday Times. The paper’s annual rankings of the 100 fastest-growing privately-owned British businesses placed PinkNews in 48th position. PinkNews is the only publisher to be included in the list, based on financial performance from 2020-2022.
Achieving an average 79.62% growth rate throughout 2020-2022, PinkNews made £10.3 million in revenue last year. Now reaching 150 million unique monthly users across all platforms, PinkNews has sustained growth despite a challenging publishing landscape.
PinkNews’ audience growth has kept pace with financial performance by building one of the largest short-form video teams in the UK. With a TikTok audience larger than publishers such as The Guardian, Metro and the Independent, alongside a Snapchat audience larger than LADBible, Vogue and The Sun, PinkNews continues to dominate the short-form video news space.
The United States has played a pivotal role in the publisher’s expansion, with American readers and viewers making up more than 60% of PinkNews’ audience. PinkNews has been able to cater to international audiences, launching French and German language content to build new audiences alongside growth in key markets across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.
Throughout 2023, PinkNews has garnered substantial recognition, winning 11 prestigious awards so far this year from industry-leading organisations such as Digiday, The Drum, AOP, and the International Trans Awards. These accolades reflect PinkNews’ dedication to excellence, inclusivity and quality content, and serve as a testament to the publisher’s commitment to driving positive change within the media industry.
This achievement also comes after the publisher’s in-house tech and product team relaunched their website and apps at the end of 2022, including the launch of the first-of-its-kind ‘positive news filter’, allowing audience members to curate a personalised feed of uplifting and empowering content to help combat news avoidance, particularly amongst Gen Z and Millennial. Recently, the tech and product team have gone on to win ‘App of the Year’ at The Drum Online Media Awards and ‘Product Development Team of the Year’ at The Association of Online Publishers Awards.
Continued investment into product development, data and analytics have been central to PinkNews’ growth strategy. Through creating in-house dashboards and analytics tools, PinkNews has been able to improve efficiencies and automate numerous processes – enabling their content teams to stay ahead of the curve.
The Times’ recognition comes at the conclusion of a particularly contentious Pride month, during which the LGBTQ+ community has faced attacks from politicians, the alt-right, and legacy media. It highlights PinkNews’ unwavering dedication to providing a platform for LGBTQ+ voices and audiences, and driving meaningful discussions.
Founder and Chief Executive of PinkNews, Benjamin Cohen, expressed his delight at the company’s placement on the The Sunday Times’ list, saying, “It is fantastic to see the tremendous growth of PinkNews over the last few years recognised in The Sunday Times 100. Digital media is a hard industry to scale and succeed in, particularly for those targeting diverse audiences, who have often been ignored by advertisers. This is now changing with the scale and power of our audience becoming an essential part of brands’ and agencies’ marketing mix in order to stay relevant.”
He added: “At a time when LGBTQ+ people are under attack by vocal and powerful minorities, PinkNews’ continued success highlights where the real majority lies, with our content reaching millions of new people every day – fulfilling our mission to inform, inspire change, and empower people to be themselves.”
