The U.S. edition of The Week Junior, an offshoot of the Future plc. The Week aimed at children ages 8 to 14, surpassed 100,000 paying subscribers last year after launching in March 2020, indicating there’s demand for media catering to younger audiences.

The publisher is almost exclusively a print subscription product, with an annual cost of $99.99, giving readers access to a weekly magazine filled with illustrations, graphics and age-appropriate reporting that chronicles global news events. 

Like its parent company Future plc., The Week Junior launched in the U.S. to grow its audience, and so far, the expansion plan has generated early returns. The U.K. version of the product, also called The Week Junior, launched in 2015 and has 91,000 subscribers—a net loss of roughly 10,000 from December 2020.

In the U.S., The Week Junior quickly reached 75,000 subscribers in its first year of operation, spurred by lockdowns. Since then, the publisher has added 25,000 incremental readers, according to Richard Campbell, the managing director of news at Future plc.

The growing U.S. readership means The Week Junior has built an advertising business against its 100,000 subscribers—an audience that often includes parents, grandparents and relatives of the children. By the end of 2022, its advertising revenue had crossed the six-figure threshold, according to Campbell, who wouldn’t share financial specifics.

“We are principally a subscription proposition, a premium product that we think people will pay for,” Campbell said. “We have not made assumptions around needing to generate significant sums of advertising revenue, which has actually given us a platform that becomes of real interest to advertisers.”

Despite the size of the audience, kids’ news has remained a challenge for publishers. Similar ventures, such as NowThis Kids and The New York Times’ NYT Now, have closed in recent years. By treating its offering as a subscription-only product and targeting audiences of parents, grandparents and educators, The Week Junior aims to grow sustainably and tap into a relatively unsaturated market. 

“At the end of the day, it comes down to attention,” said Whitney Fishman Zember, the group director of consumer insights and innovation at GroupM. “This is a generation raised on YouTube clips. Attention is scarce. How are you differentiating the product enough?”

Building an advertising business suitable for children

The Week Junior generates the majority of its revenue through direct payment, giving it the luxury of treating its advertising business as supplemental, Campbell said.

This means the publisher can avoid many of the ethical and legal challenges involved in advertising to children, such as handling sensitive information. 

The publication, which employs around 40 U.S. staff, uses the web on a limited basis. Certain campaigns will prompt young readers to visit a landing page or complete a quiz, and in those situations, the site employs an age gate, which keeps it COPPA-compliant.

Rather than sell The Week Junior as a bolt-on to the larger Future plc. portfolio, the publisher offers its inventory directly to brands and agencies looking to reach an audience of young readers and their parents, said Campbell. 

These ad-buys often include spots in one of two newsletters from The Week Junior, which cumulatively reaches 120,000 readers monthly, according to the publisher.

Like children’s advertising, the campaigns must make sense to young readers while targeting their parents. For instance, a promotion for the Propane Education and Research Council illustrated the story of a young boy who convinced his school to switch its buses to run on propane. 

Growth through digital and print

As the lives of children move increasingly online, The Week Junior has remained primarily a print product in response to reader requests, Campbell said. 

Through survey and purchaser feedback, the publisher discovered that parents value the time away from screens for their children and appreciate the physical nature of the magazine. It also uses direct mailers to reach educators and specific school programs in the U.S.

Nonetheless, most of its reader acquisition comes through digital channels, and The Week Junior offers a digital companion product for teachers looking to incorporate the physical magazine into their curriculum, said Campbell.

The relationship between the child and parent product also proves mutually beneficial. To find potential subscribers, the publisher targets readers of The Week who are parents or grandparents. And by converting young news hounds into fans of The Week, it expands its funnel of future subscribers.

“If you trust The Week brand, you’re more likely to buy it for your kids because you know it’s going to be a certain quality,” Fishman Zember said. “There’s a halo effect that a brand can tap into.”