New York Times No Longer in the Advertising Business
Great news: The New York Times Co. lost more than $35 million in the third quarter! They've decided that "selling ads" is the way of the past.
A funny thing about corporate earning is that even if your company objectively lost a boatload of money, it's okay as long as you lost less money than analysts thought you were going to lose. So even though the NYT Co. bled money, they beat estimates—and improved over Q3 of last year, when they lost more than $100 million—so things are looking A-OK, from Wall Street's perspective. Mostly due to the fact that the company is aggressively cutting costs (100 more layoffs TK), as it should be.
The real story here: The ad market is so abysmal that, for the first time ever, advertising is not even the NYT's primary revenue source:
The largest segment of the company reached a watershed moment, collecting more from readers than from advertisers, in an industry where advertising traditionally outweighed circulation in revenue by at least three to one. At the company's New York Times Media Group, which includes The Times and The International Herald Tribune, circulation revenue reached $175.2 million in the third quarter, while ad revenue dropped to $164.5 million.
Too bad they're in an ad-based revenue model. Get ready to break out those wallets, online readers.