Forbes is creating a wine-focused content vertical, commerce site and membership program to grow direct consumer revenue beyond its traffic-dependent businesses, reports Sara Guaglione of Digiday.
Guaglione reports, “There’s a sense of urgency to the strategy. In Q1 2026, Forbes’ site traffic was down 37 percent year over year, according to Emily Jackson, svp of revenue and consumer growth at Forbes.
“Forbes — and a wide range of publishers in the same boat — have to determine how to bring value to their existing, smaller audiences, and how to more effectively make money from them.
“‘We don’t have as much scale as we used to,’ Jackson said. ‘Because of a lot of the changes that we’re seeing to traffic, to the way that people are discovering content, and to monetization, we feel really strongly about building direct audiences… We are really trying to focus on what a net new business is that we can build that will be durable in this age of AI.’
“Despite the sharp dip in traffic, revenue for Forbes Vetted, the publisher’s product review site and affiliate business, was up 2 percent year over year in Q1, according to Jackson.”
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