Despite the drop in advertising revenue, Le Soir remains profitable and deploys an ambitious pricing policy to boost long-term engagement, explains to JDN the CEO of Le Soir (Rossel group), Coralie Vrancken, visiting Marseille.
JDN. At a time when the press is challenged all over the world, how is Le Soir, the leading French-language daily in Belgium, doing?
Coralie Vrancken. The last two years have been difficult years, our revenues have declined. The reason is the shrinkage of the advertising market: out of the loss of our turnover in 2025, the delay that we have recorded with respect to our objectives is 70% due to the decline in the advertising market. Our advertising revenue fell by 14% in 2025 compared to the previous year. But Le Soir remains a profitable title. Our reach has never been so powerful, we reach 800,000 people every day, which is considerable for a small market like the French-speaking community in Belgium.
In recent years, advertisers have focused on performance logic, forgetting that it is very important for them to invest massively in creating the brand. And for this they need reliable, responsible and verified contexts with highly engaged audiences.
How much weight does advertising play in your revenue?
In 2025, between 30 and 35%. This year, print is doing well on the advertising side: we are stable or even slightly better than in 2025, which is counterintuitive given that single-issue sales and paper subscriptions are falling. On digital, the decline in advertising is quite marked, particularly on video and native. We are seeing an overinvestment by advertisers in Dutch-speaking media in Belgium; the explanation for this is the dominant presence of Dutch speakers in the marketing departments of large companies. But there is also another explanation for this decline in digital: agencies are increasingly concentrating their media purchasing decisions in international hubs covering several markets, which do not have detailed knowledge of the local offering in small markets like ours. This requires extra effort from us to reach out to these hubs to develop our relationships.
What is your number of subscribers today and their progress?
Le Soir today has 175,000 subscribers: given our potential reader base, i.e. 4 million French speakers, our penetration rate among those over 18 (nearly 4.5%, editor’s note) is more than respectable. Our base has evolved significantly in recent years and I think we are close to plateauing. Our partnership with Proximus, a major telecommunications company in Belgium, which includes a 100% digital subscription to Le Soir in its most premium packs, has helped to boost our subscriber base since 2019.
This is why we deploy more energy in retaining our existing subscribers than in attracting new readers. We pay close attention to our readers’ engagement scores with our content. At the same time, we are deploying a very attractive pricing strategy to encourage the long-term commitment of our direct subscribers: we offer 24 and 12 month subscriptions, whose monthly prices remain stable and are extremely attractive. (for a 24-month commitment, plus a six-month boost offered during a limited promotional period, this amounts to €9.99 per month for two readers instead of €22.99 without commitment in the “premium duo” offer for example, editor’s note).
Ultimately, whether with Proximus or more recently with these longer-term offers, are the income you earn satisfactory?
Yes. There was a cannibalization effect but limited with the Proximus offer. Above all, this allows us to reach new audiences. That being said, we absolutely must continue to focus our efforts on retaining these audiences. One of the ways to do this is the mobile application. In a few months we will launch a new application and a new website.
It is also a strategic choice that we are making to recover readers that we had lost following the increase in our prices at the start of the year. This increase was necessary since we had not changed our prices in 2025, but it became high for more price-sensitive readers. Hence the importance of this ambitious pricing program that we are putting in place which rewards long-term commitment. And this gives encouraging results: after a few weeks, 70% of our new subscribers choose the 24 or 12 month format. We are also pleasantly surprised by the number of subscriptions that are created.
What is the share of digital in your total revenue?
The vast majority of our subscribers are digital. As for our direct subscribers excluding partnerships, 40% of our distribution revenue comes from mixed paper and digital offers and 60% from digital. If we add advertising to this calculation, the ratio changes, since advertising dominates print. We also have a major challenge which is to accelerate the transfer of readers from paper to 100% digital. The distribution of paper poses a lot of problems for us (end of government aid for distribution, strikes at Bpost, implementation of our own delivery system from 2027, etc.). For older children, the e-reader is a means of transition that works well. Finally, the strike at Bpost last April helped us accelerate this transition since we noticed a boost in the use of the e-reader. This is proof that the transition is possible.
Have you observed drops in traffic due to LLMs?
We have not yet seen traffic drops clearly linked to AI. Whatever happens, it is certain that we must make ourselves less dependent on the web, hence the importance of investing in our application to establish an increasingly direct relationship with our readers.
