New York Times sees ad drop, surpasses 7.5 million subscriptions

2020 was NYT’s top year for adding subscribers, The New York Times Company said in its fourth-quarter earnings report.

“Our work, which was consumed at historic levels, led to a year of strong business results, including a record 2.3 million net new digital-only subscription additions, with 627,000 total net additions in the fourth quarter, 425,000 to our news product. At the end of 2020, The Times had 7.5 million total subscriptions across our digital and print products,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, president and chief executive officer.

In 2020, digital revenue overtook print for the first time, and digital subscription revenue, long the Times’ fastest growing revenue stream, is also now its largest, said Levien.

Subscription revenues for the fourth quarter increased 14.7 percent to $315.8 million, advertising revenues decreased 18.7 percent to $139.3 million and other revenues decreased 12.1 percent to $54.3 million.

Fourth-quarter revenue was $509.4 million, a 0.2 percent rise from 2019. Adjusted operating profit rose 1.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019, to $97.7 million, and 0.9 percent over the year, to $250.6 million.

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