The New York Times has become the largest news publication by paid subscription in the United States, almost taking on a monopoly status in the market. Image credit: The New York Times
By Collin Colburn At Forrester, we talk a lot about the age of the customer — a 20-year business cycle where empowered customers are shaping industries. Within the media industry, publishers usually have two main types of customers:
- Advertisers that want to buy ad space to reach a publisher’s audience
- Consumers who read/watch/view the publisher’s content
- The New York Times in its Q4 2019 earnings saw both print and digital ad revenue decrease 10 percent year over year. The publisher said that it “expected to continue generating revenue more from readers than from the advertisers.” The New York Times also recently said it will remove programmatic ads from its mobile app due to ads slowing down its loading time.
- In Meredith’s Q2 2020 earnings, its CEO, Tom Harty, explained, “We are growing consumer-related revenues that is reducing our reliance on traditional advertising.” This quote builds on Meredith’s Q1 2020 earnings, where Mr. Harty stated, “As we see decreased advertising demand or volume over time, we plan to change the portfolio and look at opportunities to increase our consumer revenue.”
- In Tribune Publishing’s Q3 2019 earnings, CEO Timothy Knight remarked, “We continue to make progress on our stated goals of margin improvement and growing our digital-only subscriber base.”