KARACHI: Pakistan’s largest news outlets have amassed a staggering 28.56 million combined followers on X (formerly Twitter), but a closer look at the numbers reveals a harsh reality: the country’s biggest media brands are broadcasting into what amounts to a digital void — a symptom of a deeper structural crisis that threatens the survival of institutional journalism itself.
According to data compiled by The X Street Journal analyzing the last 10 posts from 12 major Pakistani news outlets, the average engagement rate across all accounts stands at just 0.017%. On a platform with only 3 million addressable Pakistani users, the 28.56 million combined follower count represents a heavily inflated metric — suggesting significant inactive, duplicate, or non-human accounts.
The gap between follower count and actual reach is stark. ARY News, the top-ranked outlet with 5.93 million followers, averages approximately 2,080 views per post. Geo News (Urdu), with 5.81 million followers, fares slightly better at roughly 3,301 views — but that still represents a microscopic fraction of its total audience.
Other major outlets show even more dramatic shortfalls:
– Express News (4.03M followers): ~670 average views
– Dunya News (3.77M followers): ~720 average views
– Samaa TV (3.09M followers): ~968 average views
– Dawn (1.38M followers): ~1,032 average views
At the lower end, The News (739K followers) averages just 154 views per post, while Geo News (English) (915K followers) reaches approximately 201 views. BOL News English, with 263K followers, has been inactive since 2023.
“That’s Not a Community. That’s a Contact List.”
The analysis draws a sharp conclusion: massive follower counts do not translate to influence. “That’s not a community. That’s a contact list,” the report states.
But the X performance crisis is merely the visible tip of a much larger structural failure. According to industry analysis by Chinook Strategy, Pakistan’s legacy media is in “managed decline” — a collapse driven by a single strategic choice made over a decade ago: reliance on government advertising revenue while outsourcing distribution to platforms they did not control.
Pakistan’s total digital advertising market was valued at approximately $201.8 million in 2024, with social media advertising projected at $69.4 million in 2025. The country’s internet user base stands at 111 million (45.7% penetration). The audience exists. The money exists. Pakistani news publishers are not capturing it — Google, Meta, and ByteDance are.
Meanwhile, media houses remain structurally dependent on government advertising, which accounts for 60–70% of revenue across major outlets. Between March 2024 and June 2025, the federal government allocated PKR 10.78 billion in advertising across 76 television channels and hundreds of print publications. Geo News received PKR 648.6 million; ARY, PKR 440.8 million; Samaa, PKR 385.9 million; Dawn, PKR 141.95 million.
This concentration creates fatal fragility. When that revenue source contracts, there is no cushion.
Industry analysts identify three phases in Pakistani media’s digital evolution:
– Phase 1 (2005–2012): Print-to-digital migration, e-papers, initial Google AdSense revenue
– Phase 2 (2012–2019): The “free money era” — TV content uploaded to YouTube, monetized in USD via offshore structures, organic distribution through Google and Meta ecosystems
– Phase 3 (2019–Present): The “frozen frame” — no new distribution investment on X or TikTok, no subscription products, no journalist-brand development, no independent ad infrastructure
“Phase two was, commercially, genuinely smart,” notes the Chinook Strategy analysis. “Spend in PKR. Earn in USD. Build once, monetize many times, zero marginal distribution cost. This was real financial engineering. It worked. And because it worked so well, nobody built anything else.”
Platform Shifts, Institutional Paralysis
Three platform changes have since shattered the old model:
– 2022: X changed its algorithm, stripping follower-graph distribution. Reach now requires engagement velocity in the first hour. Link posts collapsed to 0.13% engagement rate. As one industry insider put it: *”We had 8 million followers. They stopped reading us overnight.”*
– 2023: Google’s Helpful Content update reduced news publisher search traffic by 30–40% across key markets
– 2024–2025: TikTok entered Pakistan at scale, capturing 66.9 million users aged 18+ — the under-25 audience migrated entirely
“The institutions outsourced their audience relationships to platforms they did not own, could not influence, and had no contractual right to rely on,” the analysis concludes. “When the platforms moved, there was no owned infrastructure to fall back on. No email list. No subscription base. No community. No moat. Just a follower count that stopped meaning anything.”
A Generational and Ownership Gap
Pakistan’s median age is 20.7. The owners and editors-in-chief of major media houses are overwhelmingly in their 50s and 60s. They built careers in environments where broadcast and print commanded captive audiences with no way to talk back.
Gallup Pakistan’s Media Habits Report 2025 found that 54% of younger Pakistanis now own smartphones versus 46% who have televisions. The majority has already moved. Yet comments remain disabled on most Pakistani news websites, and replies are restricted on many social accounts — a one-way conversation with an audience that requires two.
The Diaspora Opportunity Nobody Built
Pakistan received a record $38.3 billion in worker remittances in FY2025 — a 26.6% year-on-year increase. The Roshan Digital Account has registered 917,400 accounts with $12.426 billion in cumulative inflows. These are financially sophisticated, digitally fluent overseas Pakistanis in London, Dubai, Houston, and Toronto.
“No Pakistani news brand has entered this space at any level,” the industry analysis notes. “The diaspora reads Dawn and Geo for free, then uses Wise to send money home. That is not a strategy. That is abandonment of the most valuable audience Pakistani media has.”
Industry Contraction Accelerates
The human cost is mounting. At least 15 print and digital organizations have reduced staff or shut down entirely in the past twelve months. The Jang Group laid off approximately 80 employees in May 2025, then another 137 in June, alongside the closure of Awaz. DawnNews.tv shuttered in December 2025. Nukta Pakistan dismissed 37 employees in November 2025. Abb Takk dismissed eight journalists from its Islamabad bureau in March 2026. Salary delays at multiple television channels prompted union intervention ahead of Eid 2026.
What Comes Next
The report’s recommendations are blunt and urgent: reduce government advertising dependency to under 20% of revenue within three years; rebuild X strategy from link syndication to editorial conversation; build and protect journalist-brands; launch diaspora membership products; partner with fintech operators for remittance services; build TikTok and YouTube Shorts as distinct editorial products; open comments and stop the one-way broadcast; and commission independent audience research.
“The gap between what Pakistani news institutions are doing and what is required to survive is not a technology gap. It is not a resource gap. It is a will gap.”
Methodology
The X performance data, current as of May 8, 2025, was sourced from X.com and based on an analysis of the last 10 posts per account across the 12 outlets surveyed. Industry structural analysis draws from Statista Digital Market Outlook, DataReportal, Press Information Department data, and independent research by Chinook Strategy.
