Over the years, our 10up WordPress Practice helped Colorado Public Radio (CPR) modernize its digital infrastructure through a performant, headless architecture, that also included a full redesign of Denverite (a local news outlet based in Denver focused on civic and cultural reporting). One of our more recent initiatives builds on that foundation: a discovery-first integration with Apple News designed to expand reach, preserve brand integrity, and grow audience in a mobile-native landscape.
In today’s shifting media landscape, where discovery is harder to come by, Apple News is emerging as an increasingly valuable channel for publishers looking to expand their reach. For Colorado Public Radio and Denverite, it offered a timely opportunity to connect with new readers in a curated, mobile-native environment. We partnered with their teams to ensure the integration reflected their brand standards and editorial values, while fitting seamlessly into existing workflows.
Reevaluating Apple News in a Changing Media Landscape
Traditional audience acquisition on the open web is becoming increasingly fragmented. Search is less dependable, not just due to SEO volatility, but also because AI-powered “zero-click” results often answer questions directly, leaving users no reason to visit publishers’ sites – ideas explored at length in our white paper on AI’s impact on visibility.
Social platforms, meanwhile, have deprioritized traditional and mainstream news, while often favoring creator content and engagement-driven narratives. Programmatic CPMs have also declined sharply, thanks not only to cyclical ad spend, but more so changes in privacy regulation and the deprecation of third-party cookies, which have made audience targeting less precise and less valuable. These trends are pushing media brands to rethink distribution beyond fragile channels, and that’s leading to a resurgence of interest in Apple News.These pressures have prompted publishers to take renewed interest in Apple News as a strategic distribution platform. Boasting over 125 million monthly users across the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia, the app combines human curation with personalized discovery, earning it a reputation for quality-first engagement.
And it’s not just about reach—publishers are seeing real business impact. According to 2024 reporting by Semafor, The Daily Beast expects to generate between $3 and $4 million annually from Apple News—more than its standalone subscription program. TIME reports seven-figure annual revenue and five million unique visitors per month, while Condé Nast titles see similarly strong traffic from the platform.
As of late 2024, Apple now handles direct advertising sales in Apple News. Publishers keep 100% of revenue from ads they sell themselves, and receive a 70% share when Apple sells ads on their behalf through backfill—a shift confirmed by AppleInsider. Axios also reports that Apple has replaced third-party vendors with its own ad sales team, signaling a deeper investment in making News both discoverable and monetizable for publishers.
Focusing on Audience Growth without Diluting Brand Integrity
Colorado Public Radio didn’t enter Apple News chasing ad revenue. In fact, they launched their presence on the platform without any monetization enabled (but with the infrastructure in place for future activation). With encouragement from donors and a forward-looking grant, we kicked off the initiative with a focus on increasing content discovery and staying true to their editorial values.
One of the most common concerns with platform integrations is brand dilution. Many publishers rightly worry that sending their content to third-party platforms means losing control over layout, design, and the subtle visual choices that reinforce editorial trust.
For CPR and Denverite, preserving that identity was non-negotiable. The Apple News experience needed to feel as intentional, clear, and trustworthy as their owned platforms. Rather than rely on default styling, we built a tailored integration that replicated each brand’s visual language within Apple News’s constraints. Typography, layout conventions, and color accents were carried over where possible to create a continuous, familiar experience.
We also accounted for edge cases and content limitations. Apple News doesn’t support certain embedded elements like interactive graphics or custom audio players. Instead of letting those elements fail silently or break layout, we implemented smart, context-aware signposts—gently guiding readers to the full experience on CPR or Denverite’s own site.
Equally important, the integration placed zero extra burden on editors. CPR’s content team continues to publish as they always have; our implementation handles the transformation behind the scenes. That level of seamlessness is critical for busy newsrooms under constant pressure to produce more with less.
Real Results: Reaching Thousands of New Readers
Just weeks after launch, the numbers told a compelling story. In its second full week on Apple News, CPR News gained 137 new followers and nearly 10,000 article views. 90% of the second week’s article views were from new readers (meaning, they did not read stories during the first week), clearly indicating an expanding reach and suggestive of new audiences discovering the brand’s online content for the first time.
Apple News surfaced CPR and Denverite stories to the right readers at the right moment, contributing to notable recirculation rates and brand re-engagement. For a regional newsroom, that kind of reach can meaningfully expand impact, as discovery turns into familiarity and loyalty.
Beyond Reach: Building Sustainable Engagement
Apple News also supports strategic calls to action: newsletter sign-ups, app downloads, donation prompts. While CPR’s first phase focused on helping more readers discover its content, future goals include adding these CTAs natively within the Apple News experience. It’s an especially promising direction given broader mobile conversion trends validated by CPR’s own data and analytics: thanks in part to low friction tools like Apple Pay, mobile readers are converting at higher rates than their desktop counterparts.
By integrating these moments of engagement directly into the discovery experience, publishers can start to transform casual readers into active supporters, without disrupting the content journey.
A Model for Modern Distribution
CPR and Denverite were able to expand their reach without compromising editorial quality or adding more work. Their stories remain visually compelling. Their teams didn’t have to learn new tools or add new steps to their publishing process.
The integration surfaces stories natively within the Apple News ecosystem, giving CPR and Denverite the opportunity to reach a much larger audience among millions of iOS users. We went beyond the styling limitations of the off-the-shelf WordPress-to-Apple News plugin to create layouts that reflected each brand’s typography, color palette, and visual conventions.
Early data shows that when implemented with care, channels like Apple News can unlock new audiences and create a bridge between content and reader.
At Fueled, we help publishers connect the dots between editorial intent, technical execution, and business outcomes. If your team is exploring how to reach more readers without compromising brand or workflow, let’s talk.
