In an increasingly harsh market for news publishers, The New York Times has been one of the strongest players, posting consistent revenue growth and solid stock market performance over the past couple of years. And although even a publisher of the Times’ size and stature is not immune to the pressures facing the news industry, its latest earnings suggest it remains one of the best-placed to respond to those headwinds.
Advertising revenue rose just 1 percent YoY during Q4 2024, according to the earnings report, noting that “some advertisers continue to avoid hard news topics.” But the New York Times said its ad products continued to deliver even in the face of this challenging environment, growing its digital ad revenue by 9.5 percent YoY. The company noted the role of more advertiser-friendly lifestyle content in the mix, as well as the NYT’s ad targeting capabilities, including its BrandMatch contextual targeting tool.
“We have a great audience broadly for enterprise, news and our lifestyle products, and we now have very effective ad products that we’ve got years of experience in first-party data and targeting,” said NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien. “We’ve got this great new AI product in BrandMatch and we have these big beautiful canvases in news and across the portfolio that we’re still rolling out. As far as what’s ahead, I would say more supply to come on games, more places where you’ll see us have app experiences.”
Cooking up business
The premium canvas formats are currently limited to display ads, according to the Times, and fetch high CPMs on a direct-sold basis. But Kopit Levien said the publisher was “experimenting more aggressively” with the format to include video, which has been a focus for the company on the content side. The CEO noted the growing role of short-form video in its cooking content, and that one in three visitors to the NYT homepages watch video on the site, creating further monetisation opportunities.
Kopit Levien added that the publisher’s combination of different formats is key to driving user engagement. “We’ve got this really unique complementary product portfolio where people come and do different things,” she said. “So watching a recipe being made, playing a game, reading a news or sports story or listening to a news or sports story, those are very different activities. And I would say the ads that go with those things can be pretty varied as a result.”
And bundling those offerings within its subscriptions, such as combining its news coverage, sports brand The Athletic, and games products (most notably Wordle), helped boost digital subscription revenues by 14 percent YoY across 2024. The company said bundling its products drove average revenue per user (ARPU) up by 4.4 percent YoY, noting the growth of the “multiproduct ARPU”.
“People are engaging more and they’re placing a higher value on the service, on the bundle in particular, which has been strong and we expect to continue to be the case,” said Kopit Levien. “And then that strengthens our ability to transition subs to higher prices over time and gives us confidence that we can have a strong ARPU trajectory going forward.”
Pressing ahead
But despite its comprehensive digital strategy, declining print subscriptions appear to be dragging down the company’s revenue growth, as well as its share price. Overall revenues for 2024 were up 7 percent, and the stock fell 13 percent following the results, suggesting negative sentiment around the declining print business.
Total subscription revenues were up 8 percent in Q4, despite a 16 percent increase in digital subscriber revenue, and the company forecasts total subscriber revenues to climb 7-10 percent in Q1 2025. The New York Times added 1.1 million digital subscribers in 2024, bringing its total number of subscribers to 11.4 million, putting the publisher “further on the path” to its target of 15 million.
“We begin 2025 with real momentum, which gives us confidence that we can deliver another year of healthy growth in subscribers, revenue and profitability as well as robust free cash flow,” said Kopit Levien.
