NAVER revamps publisher news pages, boosts visibility of issue-focused and in-depth stories

[Financial News] NAVER is revamping its publisher pages in response to changes in news users’ interests and consumption habits. It will strengthen its news curation by featuring more stories on major issues and introducing new editorial formats, including morning and evening briefings and in-depth features. The move is seen as an effort to upgrade its news service and deliver in a variety of ways in-depth features and issue coverage that calls for ongoing analysis.
According to industry sources on the 30th, NAVER has been increasing the visibility of major stories on its news publisher pages and offering a range of editorial templates since the previous day.
First, NAVER will increase the number of major stories featured in the issue section of publisher pages from six to 10. It is also expanding its templates so publishers can edit stories in various formats, including live-stream video, briefings and in-depth features.
In particular, NAVER is introducing a new briefing card format that lets users quickly catch up on the day’s major news. For example, an evening briefing shown between 6 and 10 p.m. could bring together economic indicators released in the morning, stories widely read during the day and key events scheduled for the following day to convey the day’s overall news flow. The aim is to give publishers greater editorial autonomy while improving users’ access to news.
NAVER is also increasing the visibility of in-depth features. Previously, the service focused on the latest major stories, but it will now display publishers’ in-depth features in an expanded section at the bottom of the page for all users. The aim is to give users more opportunities to read not only one-off issue coverage but also ongoing analysis and deeply reported stories.
To address the growing consumption of issue-focused news, NAVER introduced Issue Now in 2024, a service through which publishers select major issues themselves and provide collections of related stories. As of October this year, 66 publishers had published about 470,000 stories across 834 issues. Issue Now subscriptions rose about 69%, from 710,000 in January this year to 1.2 million in September.
Since its launch in 2017, NAVER News’ publisher pages have gained 28.48 million subscribers to news outlets. The pages have become a destination for subscription-based news consumption, with users subscribing to an average of 7.7 outlets each. NAVER said demand is growing among users who want to follow major current affairs as well as consume news through subscriptions.

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