Publisher apps become central to audience relationships

Publisher apps play an expanding role in how publishers engage audiences and support subscriber relationships. As apps become a larger part of digital product strategies, publishers increasingly measure how audiences use them and which experiences drive deeper engagement.

Findings from the new Pugpig Media App Report 2026 show year-over-year improvements across app engagement metrics, including sessions per user, screen views per session, and session duration. The report also examines which audience behaviors correlate with stronger engagement and where publishers continue to face challenges measuring app performance.

This detailed analysis combines benchmark data from more than 440 publisher apps across 140 media organizations with survey responses from digital publishing leaders.

Audience content preference and behavior shapes engagement

Engagement has improved across publisher apps, although performance varies across publisher categories and publishing cadence. News apps generate the highest engagement benchmarks among the publisher categories included in the study, outperforming consumer and business apps in key measures.

Publishing cadence also corresponds with different engagement levels. Daily apps outperform weekly and monthly apps across session duration, sessions per month, screen views per session, and time spent per month.

How audiences use publisher apps also corresponds with different engagement levels. Users who play games rank among the most engaged audiences in the benchmark data. Audio listeners and video viewers spend more time in apps than users who consume text content alone.

The same pattern appears across utility features. Users who search for content, save articles, share stories, or follow topics and authors generate more sessions and spend more time in apps than users who do not use those features.

Publishers continue expanding app capabilities. Push notifications appear in 92% of apps included in the benchmark, making them the most common feature. Recirculation tools appear in 68% of apps, while follow functionality is available in 53%. Audio appears in 29% of apps, video in 18%, and games in 16%.

Subscriber relationships also influence engagement

Anonymous users represent the largest share of app audiences, followed by existing subscribers. Registered users and in-app subscribers account for smaller portions of total users.

Subscriber status also corresponds with different engagement levels. Subscribers record higher engagement than anonymous users across session duration, screen views per session, sessions per month, and time spent per month.

Most publishers report limited optimization for selling subscriptions or memberships to non-subscribers through their apps. At the same time, subscriber retention ranks as the most important KPI for understanding app performance.

Direct access and push remain central to app use

Most app sessions begin when users open an app directly rather than arriving through push notifications or deep links. Most users in news and business apps opt in to receive notifications, although push open rates remain comparatively modest.

Push notifications remain a focal point for publishers. Sixty-seven percent identify push notifications as a priority initiative, and 71% report using regular editorial notifications. Forty-two percent use breaking news alerts.

App development focused on engagement and measurement

More than three-quarters of respondents say apps will be very important to their business over the next 12 months. Most organizations describe their apps as mature and optimized rather than newly launched or experimental.

Publisher priorities continue to center on product development and measurement. Sixty-two percent identify new formats such as audio, video, and live coverage as priorities, while 58% cite analytics and attribution. Personalization ranks as the AI application most likely to increase engagement, selected by 52% of respondents. Search improvements rank second at 22%, followed by content recommendations at 17%.

Measuring app value remains a challenge for publishers

Publishers place the highest value on subscriber retention, time spent per user, sessions per user, and new subscriptions in evaluating the performance of their apps. However, many media organizations do not report advanced measurement capabilities for these same metrics. Operational constraints also continue to affect app development. Half of respondents identify product team capacity as the largest blocker to progress, followed by technology team capacity at 32% and budget limitations at 27%.

While engagement continues to increase, the survey points to a broader shift in how publishers define app success. Rather than treating apps as standalone products, publishers increasingly evaluate them by the strength of the audience relationships they help build and sustain. The survey findings show that publishers continue to invest in app development as apps are an increasingly important part of their audience and product strategies.