Innovation comes at a price, it turns out. The New York Times’ investment in new digital products ate into its first-quarter earnings.
The company has been busy developing new digital products to capture readers who fall on either the low or high ends of the engagement spectrum. The NYT Now free mobile app on one end and, at the other, Times Premier, a premium service aimed at diehard fans, rolled out after the end of the first quarter, and more vertical apps are on the way.
In the company’s first-quarter earnings call, it disclosed that operating costs rose 3.8 percent to $365.8 million, mainly due to expenses associated with new products. Operating profit was $22.1 million in the quarter, down from $28.1 million in the same period of 2013.
On the bright side, the Times’ print and digital revenue is up for the first time in several years. The paper also continues to add digital subscribers, contributing to a 13.6 percent increase in overall digital circulation revenue over the year-ago quarter.
More in Media
SPUR publishes AI content tracking standard, pitches OpenAI and Google to join advisory board
Publishers are pushing for AI transparency with a new SPUR standard to track how AI tools use content, and inviting frontier AI labs to help.
Media Briefing: Publishers are turning GEO from an experiment into a business
Publishers are turning GEO into a new revenue stream as clients increasingly look to boost their brands’ visibility in AI-generated answers.
The creator economy’s stance on AI is shifting — again
Creators are integrating AI tools into their workflows, but at what point does it overtake the creative process and result in sameness?