Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
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
Creators say it’s difficult to make money from news — with platform rules and brand guidelines
With more people getting news from creators than traditional media, those creators are still trying to build sustainable businesses.
Why CNN International is building for agentic ad market that barely exists yet
CNN International is still chasing its first agent-sold dollar by Q1.
Media Briefing: The transatlantic push to rein in stealth bots is gathering pace
U.S. and U.K. publishers are pushing for laws to crack down on stealth AI crawlers as bot scraping surges and demands for transparency grow.