Future’s Simon Collis and Beehiiv’s J.T. Levin at Beehiiv event at Google HQ on Thursday 12 February 2026. Picture: LRock Media
Letting creators upload stories, more personal buying advice and free memberships are big publishing trends aiming to boost revenue at Future plc.
Future has evolved the way it presents shopping advice and e-commerce content via its Signal initiative, is partnering creators with its brands via the Collab initiative, and is aiming to turn unknown users into registered members via Future+.
Simon Collis, senior vice president leading Future’s technology and games verticals, told an event hosted by Beehiiv and Google in London on 12 February that this set of products represents how the publisher is “building for tomorrow”.
[Read more: Future takes action on ‘Google Zero’ as revenue declines ]
Via Signal, Future is focusing its affiliate content on “collections” in which one person shares their personal advice around a theme.
Collis said: “The win comes from changing from what the traditional view of what buying advice has been into something that is more enjoyable, more personal.”
He said it is important for this advice to be accessible from a wider variety of platforms, rather than the high-intent search that has been traditional for affiliate content, noting that people often go to social media for inspiration.
Sites like tech brand Tom’s Guide would previously have primarily published product review articles angled around “the best” TVs or soundbars.
“The ‘collection’ version of that,” Collis said, “is ‘I’m the editor of Tom’s Guide, this is my home cinema set-up’. So in one place you can see this is the TV, this is the soundbar, these are the cables I’m using – everything that you need is on there.
“It’s much pared down from what you would traditionally write. A lot less copy, a lot more pictures, and getting straight to the product advice.”
[Read more: Future plans 45 editorial redundancies at titles including Techradar and Tom’s Guide ]
On Creative Bloq, one headline reads: “I asked my 8 year old to create a gift guide for creative kids under $50 – and here it is.” Another example, on Who What Wear, is: “I’m a Picky Jeans Shopper—These Are the Ones I’ve Come to Rely On the Most.”
Collis said these changes are resulting in “up to three times more traffic coming from social and from email.
“This integrates really nicely with Instagram Stories so people can access directly from there. And also the on-site behaviour is good: people are more likely to click through, they are more likely to buy.”
Future made £76.7m in affiliate revenue in the year to 30 September 2025 , down 6% due to a 10% drop in website sessions with its B2C brands. Affiliate revenue is generated when users click links to buy products from a Future article.
Collis cited a 2025 global survey that said 78% of people find online shopping overwhelming as there is too much choice. He said people can struggle to trust reviews and shopping search results which may have been promoted as the result of a paid partnership.
“We see that we have an opportunity here,” Collis said. “We’ve been doing this kind of affiliate e-commerce for a long time. We drive up to $1bn in purchases a year through our affiliate network…
“We track about half a billion products across thousands of retailers. We have price histories. We know what people have clicked on, we know where the interest is. We have everything in the data pool.”
‘Win-win model’ for creators and audiences
Collab, which is currently in closed beta testing, was created in response to attention moving away from legacy brands and towards individual creators.
Collis said the idea is to showcase vetted creators and help Future’s brands reach younger audiences in a “win-win model that benefits audiences, creators and partners”.
It gives creators access to a pared-down version of Future’s CMS so they can publish straight to its sites, bringing new voices to the brands.
For example Marie Claire introduced more than two dozen new fashion contributors via its Style At Large branding, telling readers: “We’re partnering with some of the most fashionable women we know to bring you their stories of personal style.”
Who What Wear has Editors in Residence , a “collective of voices shaping style and beauty today”, Ideal Home has a “panel of style experts” on Open House , Homes & Gardens has editors-at-large writing about design for By Design , and Kiplinger has Adviser Intel , a curated network of financial professionals.
Collis said: “What we’ll typically see on this content is we’ll see four times more traffic coming from social and so on as opposed to Google which is a very traditional acquisition source for us.
“It’s a different audience arriving in a different way.”
Future memberships encourage users to sign in, not just sign up
Finally, the Future+ membership programme is aiming to solve two main problems, Collis said.
“Our users expect more from us. They want personalisation, they want more functionality… What we want is people to, essentially, have a closer relationship with us, to be willing to share their data and to be signed in.”
Collis said Future already had about 13 million people signed up for some kind of service, mostly newsletters but also forums and other community features.
But he said: “We’ve never joined it up, and also you tend to sign up but not sign in.”
Future+ has different membership perks on different websites, Collis said, depending on the functions that would be useful to their particular communities.
For example Tom’s Guide is built strongly on buying advice, so its membership includes benefits like exclusive discounts and personalised deals.
Slides about Collab, Signal and Future+ from presentation by Future’s Simon Collis at Beehiiv/Google event in London on 12 February. Pictures: Press Gazette
Meanwhile, fans of football site Four Four Two like games, quizzes and polls so these, along with leaderboards and badges, have become a key part of the membership.
“They love to give their opinion on what’s happening,” Collis said. “They want to spend some time, have some fun. The whole gamification element goes really well.”
None of Future’s memberships contain a paid element so far. “This is sign up, sign in and be part of the community,” Collis said.
“For us, we know who you are on the site, which obviously is hugely valuable, but also we have the contact strategy off the back of it, so we have permission to contact you.” That contact could look like an email with price alerts for Tom’s Guide members, for example.
He continued: “We’re really pleased with how it’s gone. It’s relatively new. At the moment there’s a few things that we really like.
“One is the memberships are growing 30% month on month and they’re continuing to do that… so it’s starting to get to some really quite nice numbers.”
Future revealed in December that it had signed up 67,000 new members in the first ten weeks of Future+ memberships going live.
Collis continued: “We really like that we can see changes of behaviour for people who sign up. So what that means is it’s not just a way of capturing the most engaged users, but actually we can see that those users, once they become members, they’re visiting more often.”
He said members spend about four times longer in a session than a non-member.
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