Amanda Wigginton, Strategy and Insight Consultant, looks at what makes trusted editorial brands truly ‘non-negotiable’ to their audiences.
One of the reasons why the 2026 report by Enders & the PPA “Humans & Machines: The everywhere equation” is on my list of stand out reports this year, is because it prioritises delivering audience needs as a critical success factor.
Everything changes but you
What reassured me most about the report was that while it feels like everything is changing – audience needs are pretty much the same:
- Audiences still value trusted quality content – human voices, personality, authority, and experience all still really matter and will continue to matter, despite AI acceleration
- Belonging and community are built on real human needs – trusted editorial brands have always created ‘people like me’ communities, communities with intent where the editors, and advertisers are part of the group too
- Habit is still the way you create brand loyalty – most of the work I do with publishers is about creating habitual moments that keep audiences coming back. Whether that’s through newsletters, podcasts, or decision making and support content, putting your user needs first and delivering the content in the format they want drives frequency.
- Making it easy makes you their first port of call – providing utility and a frictionless experience – through tools, guides, and personalisation – will amplify engagement and loyalty, and make a direct impact to the bottom line too.
Core formats still deliver to audience needs
AI is fundamentally changing the way audiences discover content – it’s eroding discovery and consumers are increasingly having to make choices about what content they consume.
The good news is that the formats you expect still remain central to achieving this: video remains key to driving engagement; print adds value through depth, presence, and habit; and subscriptions develop engaged user relationships. No single platform can do it all, and publishers need to experiment and innovate based on where their audiences are and what needs they have.
And in more good news, what drives habit and loyalty is the strong human voice and personality that trusted editorial brands are built on – the parasocial relationships are what drives repeated engagement.
Good Housekeeping and History Extra are two great examples that demonstrate how becoming non-negotiable requires designing for the user’s specific needs.
Hearst UK reimagined Good Housekeeping’s extensive library of 4,000+ recipes into the Good Housekeeping Kitchen app. By focusing on a single, recurring user question – ‘What’s for dinner?’ – they developed the proposition into an inspiration tool that drives daily visits.
Immediate treats video as a core production asset – what they call ‘liquid content’ – embedding video strategy across editorial functions. History Extra demonstrates this planning for short-form, long-form, and podcasts from the start to maximise reach and engagement across platforms.
Invest in trusted editorial brands
Plan for quality not just scale
In a digital landscape flooded with generic, unsafe, and AI synthesised content, the traditional media planning processes need to change and shift from scale at any cost. Focus should be on:
- Placing campaigns alongside trusted, human curated editorial creates a halo effect. When brands appear within high intent, quality environments, ad effectiveness and consumer action increase significantly compared to passive feeds.
- Advertisers get better results by tapping into those ‘people like me’ communities where audiences are highly engaged and keep coming back – something that programmatic targeting on open web platforms can’t replicate. Media plans need to recognise the additional value that magazine media brings through deep, habitual relationships – direct subscribers, newsletter readers, and event attendees over transient, programmatic ad impressions.
- Commercial messaging is welcomed in magazine media. It is an expected and useful part of the audience decision making journey – rather than a disruption or distraction. This directly drives purchase consideration and conversion for the advertisers that invest.
AI and machines will continue to transform how content is discovered and distributed. But the opportunity for advertisers is clear: invest in the trusted editorial brands that audiences actively choose, value and return to. If a brand has made itself non-negotiable to its audience, it should be non-negotiable on the media plan too.
