Google News Initiative Audience Growth Lab
Registration Open
March 7th 2025 , 11:00 AM IST to March 17th, 2025 11:59 PM ISTApply Now
From Insights to Impact: Accelerate your audience growth - Build, engage and monetise smarter with GNI Audience Growth Lab
The Google News Initiative is inviting news publishers in India to sign up for participation in the GNI Audience Growth Lab, a 6-month training and implementation program, in partnership with Mediology and Tatvic Analytics. The lab is free of cost.
The program is designed to empower news publishers with practical workshops and hands-on implementation, helping them fully leverage advanced analytics tools (GA4 and NCI) and first-party data to get deeper audience & content insights.
The program harnesses AI-driven insights and advanced predictive analytics in GA4 to forecast audience behaviors—such as likely purchasers, churning users, and top spenders—and develop strategies that drive sustainable growth in digital publishing by anticipating user actions.
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Program Structure
The duration of the program will be 6 months and divided into 2 phases:
Phase 1: Website and App Audit/GAP analysis
- Discovery sessions with leadership/editorial/product and marketing teams to understand the processes, people, and platforms currently in use with regards to understanding audience data, identifying gaps and opportunities for optimization.
- Participants will receive a personalized engagement audit based on their GA4 and Search Console data with recommendations to grow reader engagement.
- Trainings/Workshops on News Consumer Insights (NCI), Google Analytics 4 (GA4), First party data and News on Google Search
- 1:1 Consultations
Phase 2: Implementation Support
Implementation will involve working closely with the publishers on a 1:1 basis and the vendor partner will build and implement technical solutions based on the recommendations/audit conducted in phase 1. The solutions include (but not limited to):
- Data tools integration and measurement - Current implementation website/app review & custom events set-up - GA4 custom events & firebase integration, user funnels, custom reports & looker studio for CXOs & editorial teams
- Audience building and analysis - Audience building based on user demographics (category, location, logged-in user etc.)
- AI-Generated Content Insights and Optimization - NCI set-up to gather AI recommendations on audience, revenue site performance
- App users data tracking & optimisation - Cross platform (web & app) tracking for 360 degree user journey (with actions initiated on web & completed on app or vice-versa
- First-party Data Integration - Log-in with Google One-tap & tracking user metrics like PVs, category preferences to build personalisation
What can news publishers expect from the program?
- Gain audience insights: Gain a deeper understanding of user behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns with GA4 audience-building & predictive analysis.
- Capture key events using GA4 that can determine deeper product usage, ad performance and subscription growth.
- Adoption of advanced features like custom reports in GA4: To enable publishers analyze ads, audience behavior, conversions, and real-time data, optimizing engagement, content strategy, and revenue growth.
- Marketing spend optimisation: Funnel Analysis to enable publishers track user journeys, optimize conversion phases, analyze drop-offs, and improve ad spending.
- Develop audience with news consumer insights: Understand reader behavior, compare engagement trends, and strengthen relationships with key news consumers with data-driven strategies in publishing.
- Boost First-Party Data Collection: Utilize Google One Tap to gather valuable first-party data, reducing reliance on third-party sources while ensuring privacy compliance.
- The program will guide publishers through the data maturity journey, progressing them from Nascent to Emerging/ Developing/Advanced, ultimately transforming them into a data-driven news organization.
How to Apply
The application window for the GNI Audience Growth Lab will be open from March 7th 2025 , 11:00 AM IST to Mar 17th, 2025 11:59 PM IST. During this period, interested applicants would be required to fill out an application form, providing information about their organization, digital plans and other relevant details. As part of the application process, participants will need to review and accept the GNI Audience Growth Lab Application Terms and Conditions.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any Indian Language local news organizations that produce original news and are incorporated or registered in India.
- Eligible applicants must have an operational website and a minimum of 5 years of continuous operation.
- Newsrooms with a staffing capacity of at least 50 full-time employees (FTE) employees.
- Eligible applicants can include for-profit or nonprofit traditional news organizations, digital natives, and broadcasters.
- Is willing to test and improve your workflows, products, and technology.
and you…
- Can commit 5-10 hours per week to the program
- Can assign a POC for all communications, ensuring the relevant teams attend the sessions
- Are willing to share insights with other publishers and the greater news industry
