In every discussion about the future of media, almost the same phrase is repeated: "Traditional journalism is over, and the future belongs entirely to content creators and social media." The idea is attractive and easy to circulate, especially when you see a young person with a phone gathering a million views while a prestigious newspaper sells or rents its building. However, there is a fundamental difference between diagnosing the crisis and understanding the nature of the cure. When you look closely at the figures of the Saudi media market specifically, you find that the picture is more complex than it appears in meetings and articles.
The real issue is not just about moving to digital platforms; this shift has already happened and is indisputable. The more important question is: Where does the money go?
According to the Saudi Arabia Advertising Market report issued by The Report Cube in 2025, the size of the Saudi advertising market exceeded $6 billion, making it the largest in the Gulf, which is a huge number by all standards.
However, the full picture reveals a worrying detail; a study on the KSA Digital Advertising Market by Ken Research shows that Google and Meta capture more than 70% of digital advertising spend in Saudi Arabia and the region.
To put it more clearly: when you advise a Saudi media institution to undergo a full digital transformation and rely on platforms, you are not necessarily saving it. You are turning it into a mediator that gathers the audience and then hands them over to a company in San Francisco.
Saudi media institutions today are not just competing with each other. MBC Group, SRMG, and others operate within a market where global platforms control the largest share of attention, advertising, and digital data, benefiting from a global user base and distribution and advertising models that transcend local markets.
This explains a seemingly contradictory phenomenon: an institution achieves millions of views but faces continuous financial challenges. Audience reach alone is no longer enough to build an economically sustainable media model, especially in an environment where digital platforms own the distribution tools, advertisements, data, and algorithms together, while the institution's relationship with the audience remains tied to the rules and constant changes of those platforms.
Therefore, the answer is not in abandoning journalism, but in rebuilding its funding model. The New York Times announced in its financial results for 2026 that it exceeded 13 million subscribers, and its digital subscription revenues in the first quarter alone exceeded $389 million. The newspaper did not survive because it reports news faster than the X platform, but because it built a direct relationship with its reader away from the mercy of algorithms. It expanded into specialized content, reviews, analysis, podcasts, and even games, all with one goal: for the institution to be the one that owns the audience, not the platforms.
Also, The Atlantic and Der Spiegel tell the same story: digital subscriptions and deep analytical content are not a romantic choice to preserve the "spirit of journalism"; they were a business model that withstands the storm of platforms.
The discussion we need today must go beyond the question "Should we go digital?" as this question is outdated. The correct question today is: How do we build a digital model that keeps money, data, and the audience within the institution?
Initially, it can be said that achieving this passes through five indispensable axes: direct revenue that does not depend entirely on advertising, audience data owned by the institution and not the platform, subscriptions or memberships that build true loyalty, diverse digital products that go beyond news and scoops, and the ability for independent distribution.
Finally, investing in young talent is a real necessity, not a cliché. But a talented young person without an institution to protect them, and without a financial model to feed them, ends up enriching a foreign platform with free content. Silicon Valley was built by youth, yes, but it was also built with business models, investors, and revenue strategies.
Talent without a professional infrastructure is not a media industry; it is free shows for an audience you do not own. Quick views create a temporary buzz, while institutions build value that accumulates over time. The future of Saudi media depends on its ability to combine the two, not choose between them.
