Amplify Europe, MDIF’s business support program for independent digital media in Central and Southeast Europe, has concluded its two-year run with strong results. The final report shows clear gains in revenue, audience reach and organizational capacity across the cohort.
Run by Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) and funded by Postcode Lotterie (Germany and Netherlands), the program supported 11 media organizations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania between 2023 and 2025 with tailored mentoring, capacity building and innovation grants.
The economic outlook for media in Europe is deteriorating. Seven in ten countries saw conditions worsen last year, according to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. The strain is sharper in Central and Southeast Europe, where political influence and market constraints further limit independent outlets.
In this context, when news and information organizations grow their revenue and reach, they are not just “scaling a business.” They are fortifying the infrastructure of democracy in regions where access to reliable news is under political and economic pressure.
Results in numbers
According to the report, over the duration of the program participating media:
grew their revenues by an average of
78%
grew their audience reach by an average of
91%
expanded their teams by an average of
37%
Most tellingly, Amplify Europe demonstrated a strong return on investment: for every €1 of innovation funding provided, these media organizations generated approximately €43 in additional revenue.
Patterns of success
Amplify Europe combined long-term coaching, targeted training and innovation funding, tailored to each organization’s needs. For some, this meant rebuilding technology. For others, it meant hiring a first sales manager, launching a membership model, or restructuring leadership so founders could step back from day-to-day operations and focus on strategy.
Yet, across the cohort, several key patterns emerged that define the modern, resilient media organization:
- Diversifying revenue for independence: The average revenue increase was fueled by a move away from legacy advertising and grant dependency towards diversified, modern income streams. For example, UH.ro and ZYX Publishing Group prepared membership models to build direct audience support, while Spotmedia.ro introduced a new commercial events stream.
- Strengthening business operations: Growth in staff focused heavily on building “extra-editorial” departments to ensure business sustainability and moved beyond founder-led structures. Recorder.ro created an Executive Director role to oversee operations. Mediapool.bg appointed a Sales Manager and a Digital Development Manager. PodTepeto established its first sales team, hiring both a Sales Manager and a Sales Coordinator.
- Modernizing tech and data foundations: Audience expansion was often the direct result of technical modernization and better audience insight. Sibenik.in completed a full mobile-first redesign and strengthened its SEO performance tracking. UH.ro, Mediapool.bg and ZYX Publishing Group migrated to new publishing platforms. Recorder.ro and Boulevard Bulgaria conducted large-scale audience surveys to better understand user behaviour.
From support to investment: The ZYX Publishing Group case
The experience of ZYX Publishing Group, the company behind HotNews, one of Romania’s most influential digital media groups reaching 5.5 million users, exemplifies the institutional maturity Amplify Europe aims to foster.
Over the course of the program, the company increased revenue by 107 percent, grew its audience by 32 percent and expanded its team by 51 percent. For every €1 of innovation funding, it generated approximately €66 in revenue.
This growth was driven by a series of targeted changes. ZYX modernized its technology through a CMS migration and new publishing infrastructure, professionalized its advertising operations, expanded its editorial portfolio by launching a sports vertical and assisting with the launch of an investigative NGO, while preparing a membership model to build direct audience support.
The partnership with MDIF has helped us a lot to boost the business, to update the technologies behind HotNews and to quickly diversify our revenue sources. The improvements with the greatest impact, to which MDIF had an important contribution, are the adoption of a new Ad-Server solution (doubling programmatic advertising revenues in two years) and the substantial consolidation of the editorial team.”
Razvan Ionescu
Publisher, CEO and co-owner of ZYX Publishing Group
Having used the Amplify Europe program to strengthen its foundations, ZYX Publishing Group is now positioned for investment-backed growth that can help the company move ahead in its pursuit of long-term sustainability.
You can read stories similar to the ZYX Publishing Group’s story in a detailed report titled “Strengthening European Digital Media – Stories and Results from Amplify Europe (2023-2025)“.