Over the past 2 year’s, the Emerging Tech Network has been running sessions with senior UK media leaders to help independent and emerging technology companies better navigate their ICP’s decision making processes.
Pitching the product, not the problem
The most common complaint from buyers is that the conversation starts with the supplier’s solution. A former magazine group CEO told us: “I’ve sat in a lot of meetings with vendors who have explained in great detail the solution that they have, not the solution that I need.”
Founders feel the gap too. One described the relationship with publishers as “not a partnership. It’s very transactional.”
The appetite to invest in what comes next is there. In the Reuters Institute’s 2026 survey of 280 digital leaders in 51 countries, 62% said media companies are not investing enough in future models.
Adoption is the harder part
Budget is rarely the main blocker. A managing editor at a national title said: “We are literally wringing water out of these people… nobody wants to adopt anything new.”
The same survey found 53% struggle to attract product people or technical and design talent, and 49% report internal competition between groups that makes it hard to align around new projects. My reading is that the skills often exist inside publishers but sit in separate teams that do not always connect.
Sharing, but not buying together
Publishers now share what they learn openly, and they have stood together on AI licensing. Pooling money to buy or back technology is a different matter. One managing editor put it plainly: “we’re all competitors.” A consumer publisher CEO described a failed shared platform as “one of my great regrets”.
A media founder in one of our debates made the case for changing that: “We need to stick together… otherwise, we just do not exist.”
Elevating start-ups together
My view is that the next step has to be collective. Publishers hold the know-how, and the most useful new technology tends to come from small teams focused on one specific problem. Few publishers can back those teams alone. Together they could do it far better.
The sessions pointed to some practical starting places. Give technology a seat alongside editorial and commercial. Make early trials cheap and safe: one publisher “bills it as a test”, which gives staff permission to drop a tool that does not work. Shorten the route in with tighter briefs and common contract terms, which is my inference from what founders described. And create more places where publishers and tech companies work on real problems together before anyone is selling.
I would drop the word vendor and perhaps elevate the word value. Judge new technology on what it delivers, and give the people building it a place at the table. Our joint futures depend on it.
