Ep 22: How The New York Times Is Winning in Advertising (While Everyone Else Struggles)

Most media companies are fighting declining advertising revenue.

The New York Times is moving in the opposite direction.

In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly and Sean launch a new deep-dive series by examining one of the most successful media businesses today. Using Guideline's advertising intelligence alongside The New York Times' public financial reporting, they break down where the company's advertising growth is really coming from—and why it continues to outperform much of the industry.

Topics include:

• Why New York Times advertising revenue grew 29%
• The role of direct advertising versus programmatic
• How podcast advertising has become a meaningful revenue driver
• Why sports content continues to outperform expectations
• What The Athletic acquisition is contributing
• The surprising return of print advertising
• Why subscriptions and advertising work together
• Lessons publishers and marketers can apply to their own businesses

Whether you're a marketer, publisher, agency leader, or media executive, this episode offers a practical look inside one of the industry's strongest advertising businesses.

Key Takeaways

• New York Times advertising revenue trends
• Podcast sponsorship growth
• Sports media monetization
• Print advertising performance
• Direct advertising strategy
• Subscription business expansion
• Publisher revenue diversification
• Media business strategy

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to press@guideline.ai.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You're listening to Media Monitor, where we break down what's happening in the media and the advertising industry and tell you what it actually means. Sean, welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Kelly, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:20

This week we had our company newsletter went out and it featured a stat about the podcast and said that we are currently in the top 10, ranked number nine in Apple's marketing podcast, which was super exciting. Yeah. And and, you know, I love to love to see the growth of listeners, but it got me thinking how do we get folks more engaged? Because we want feedback. We want comments. We want to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

It's the internet age.

unknown 0:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

We're like udo influencers at this point. You know.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

We need that engagement.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Engagement is part of the stat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

And so this week we're going to go a little bit deeper into a topic, but we don't have a name for the segment yet. So we are hoping.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

A little bit into the to the to the sausage making. Kelly and I probably spent a whole half hour meeting debating what to call it and using all sorts of rhyming dictionaries to get us there. And no luck. No luck. So comments are very needed on this one.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

And I told Sean that maybe it was like the media monitor microscope. And he told me that we would lose. He told me basically that I'm cooked.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, we're very happy with our growth demo in the 24 to 30 year old bracket. We're doing really well. Those numbers are climbing. I felt like maybe referencing a micro microscopic view or magnifying glass probably misses out that whole cohort. I'm not expecting. So maybe, maybe they do use microscopes and magnifying glasses, but it felt like there was probably a more youthful take on this.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

I I think you're probably right. So we're going to put it out there. But what we're planning to do this week is go deeper into our own data and really unpack how, you know, how companies make their money from advertising and, you know, take it to a level deeper than what you can see if you're just doing your own research. And, you know, I I can't take any credit for this. This is really, you know, Sean, as we were talking about the the things that you're intrigued to read, you mentioned 10Ks.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

I mean, who doesn't who doesn't love curling up in a blanket? It's mid-December, and you just want to crack open to 10K and just sit there next to a fire and start to finish, just read exactly how a company's doing. Get into their financials. Talk EBITDA. Who doesn't love that?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

EBITDA. Well, so for those less familiar who aren't curling up high level, Sean, what's what's a 10K?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah. So what's uh sort of cool about uh I guess cool publicly traded companies is they have to tell you how they're doing, right? It's part of why there's all this buzz around the IPOs coming from these AI companies, right? They have to reveal some level of financial detail. Um and so 10Ks are part of this requirement that in order to be publicly traded in a New York stock exchange or a NASDAQ or things like that, you got to kind of put up to this document. Most of it's pretty like standardized across all companies. There's a few sections that you can kind of like ad lib and go crazy with, but by and large, it's pretty static. Everybody kind of reports the same thing. There's a certain like uh requirement as to the types of financials, how you're actually accounting for that, right? You can't just make up your own math and say this is revenue, right? It has to be certainly defined. And that's then kind of out there for anyone to read. So you can kind of actually get into the business and understand what's going on, uh, which is which is interesting, right? The problem that I've always had is like in advertising, 90% of companies, if they even tell you what they're making and ad revenue, it's usually just a line that says like advertising. And in many places, it doesn't tell you if that's US, international, European, right? It just says this like generic line and doesn't really offer a lot of detail. And so that's why I thought, hey, like we have a lot of detail. What if we did do one of these like micro segments, target, you know, a smaller amount of time that we're doing the pod just to see if folks like it. And if so, we can kind of add these into the rotation along with our grab bags, our morsels, our longer, like long form episodes, right? Like mix up the content to keep your feed interesting in terms of podcasts and also just give us some ability to modulate the effort, right? Like this is a this isn't even a part-time job. This is like a part-time, part-time job for us. And so, like trying to manage that with like our regular duties, we want to kind of like also figure out the types of content we can deliver that's interesting. So that was where we landed on this microscope magnifying glass.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, magnify magnifying glass, microscope. You you guys tell us. And so please. Um then, I mean, also for those who don't know that you know what we sell is is this this data, right? Um, amongst uh, you know, other parts of our business. This is why companies come to us, is they want that that that double click in on ad spend, pricing data. They want to get into the nitty-gritty. And so what we thought we'd do is we would look at a company and and just talk a little bit about, you know, what's growing, where they're seeing some, you know, successes. We'll get into the segments that, you know, the the placement types and and how you know we can get drill down into those components and give you a window into what could just be a single light item, advertising all that's underneath that hood. Uh because you know, it's super interesting as you're thinking about if you're a a competitor in the space, you know, where you want to be investing or divesting. So without, you know, too much more intro, let's dive into it and talk. We're gonna talk New York Times.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Gray Lady.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

The gray lady. So, so you know, we pulled up their stats and we were looking at what were some of the drivers. And Sean, you you called out a few pretty interesting things. So talk to us about what you saw.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Well, yeah. So overall, right, there's this narrative in this broader context that hard news isn't doing well. Um, you know, we're seeing some of that narrative and kind of how post, you know, Peace Guy, CBS is kind of going through a bunch of changes in terms of how they want to go to market, all these things, right? And the narrative has been like hard news doesn't sell, it's not interesting. And the York Times is often held up as like the print of record for the US, right? In terms of like the be all end all when it comes to hard news. And what's interesting is that both their 10K has shown growth, subscriber growth, all of these things. But when you actually look at like get deep into our ad spend data, they're also up. You know, we're looking at 25 versus 24. They're up 29% in terms of ad revenue. Like that's bananas in today's world. And we talked about this before, right? There's no midterms, there's no like one-off sporting event that maybe would have benefited viewership or readership on the at uh athletic, right? None of that. This was just like a classic, just a regular old year out there and still up 29%, which is like good for them, right? There's not many players in the space that can kind of say the same thing around advertising, which I thought was super interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

I I was just gonna say that 29% is also direct, right? Because often it's like, oh, well, it must be programmatic and it must be because like they just allowed display to be sold programmatically. And there is some of that, but we're also talking like the the data here, a lot of this is direct sold. This is like New York Times going out, hustling, selling their own stuff. Um, so this isn't just like I'm buying a generic news demo and I'm finding them wherever they're reading. This is I'm going to the New York Times because I want to be in the New York Times.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Exactly. And, you know, I I can think without like looking at the data, I can think of a lot of what I would consider pretty smart plays that they've made over the last few years. Um, you know, post-COVID like games, right? Like we're all talking about the Wordle. That's a big piece of it. Drilling, like going deep into podcasts and figuring out how to make that part of the like the fabric of your life. I mean, I for one, I listen to the daily every single day. And then, you know, from a subscription perspective, I think hitting that family plan to expand listener, you know, readership, listenership is a a way to grow ads, right? The more eyeballs you have, the more ads you can sell to them. So they're kind of like doing a lot of different things all the same time. And you know, thematic with some of our other episodes is embracing the power of sports, right? What did you see in that area?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah. So I'll work backwards from your first point around um podcasts, because I think that's an interesting one. So uh one, you know, uh in 2025, they made about $16 million on advertising for podcasts, which is is great, right? Now, it's not the 29% growth that they're seeing across the board. But what is interesting is what has been explosive for them is the actual sponsorship. So like host red copy or actual sponsorship injected into the pods is growing literally triple digits compared to just your kind of, I guess technically more like a spot and dot within the podcast. And so it's this math massive growth engine on the pod side. And it makes sense, right? Like they've invested, they have a lot of hard-hitting talent that have been podcasting for years that kind of draws in listeners and kind of follows them almost like a mini cult of personality, being like, Yeah, I need to hear more from um these folks. And they're doing really well, right? That's what's driving a lot of their podcast, is getting those folks to also then do that host red copy. Yeah. So they're up, you know, pretty substantially. You know, 16 million of their overall revenue came from podcasts in 2025. So pretty solid. And then on the the athletic side, the sports side, right? They kind of like sort of rebrand branded their sports section. They went all in. They've got video now. That's another area that has seen tremendous growth. Like if you look at 2025, for example, it's roughly like 34 million, 33 million just on sports-related content alone, which is all, you know, collectively up like 75%, 80%, which is just massive. And again, like part of that is they changed their strategy, they invested, but just explosive in terms of like what they're seeing from an advertising perspective.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

And like you said, it wasn't a World Cup year. You know, it wasn't a year where it's not important.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

It wasn't a year when knock would and you know, when this this podcast airs, we're gonna know the result. But I hope the result is that the Knicks take the championship after last night's game. After last night's game. Oh man, I wish I was in New York City right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

I looked up the stats just to prepare for this, this, this meeting. Actually, you know what? It was the athletic push notification to my phone telling me that they came back big in the in you know the last quarter, came back for the largest gap, I think, ever in the NBA finals to kind of make a comeback. Only no reason I know that is the athletic. So shout out New York Times. Did you even mean to make that connection? But here we are.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Here we are. So, okay, podcasts, sports, that's absolutely driving the growth. Anything else that's kind of standing out for you?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah. So the one thing that like legitimately surprised me, which like I don't know if it if it should or shouldn't, uh, is print. Print is not debt. Print, their ad revenue for print grew 9%.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

So like that's actually shocking to me. I can't wrap my head around it.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, actually, like out of everything I read in here, that was like the single stat that genuinely surprised me. Because like you you look at our data on print and like real print, not just like, oh, this is a newspaper making stuff. No, I'm talking like legitimately broadsheet, you know, ink on your hands after reading it for half an hour type print. Oh, universally across our data, down, right? Uh yeah. Every country we look at, all like mid-single digit declines. New York Times, up nine percent, which again is not the robust engine that is the 29, but the fact that it's print and they're still cranking out money on it is just to me mind-boggling. Like good, good for them. Um, and it's not nothing. It was 36 million bucks in 2025, which again is like pretty substantial and growing. You're like, all right, clearly you're doing something right.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

That's mind-boggling. Well, so I mean, I think I think all of this makes a lot of sense. And um, you know, it's nice to see a company investing in the right places, making the right decisions.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Definitely some good bets that paid off.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Exactly. And so, you know, I'd be curious for feedback. What do people give us ideas? What what would you like to see to help them grow even more? What's missing for you in your in your New York Times subscription if you have one? And um what did you think about this episode where we dove into a particular company and and that advertising line item? And then of course, what should we call this thing? Like I I don't think it's magnifying glass and microscope. I'm pretty sure it's not.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I could be wrong, but I don't have a good pulse on the kids these days, you know?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

We need the feedback. So I mean, and that that's where we'll leave it.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah. The one thing I will throw is questions, because you were on a good roll with questions, is I would also say if you do like this segment, what companies do you want us to break down in the future? You know, because you and I went back and forth how many times on trying to figure out the right company that was like an interesting mix of stuff. Not that we want to like mock, you know, the social media companies of the world, but like Meta makes their money from meta stuff. So it's like we can we can always break down like Instagram, carousels, video, et cetera, but like it's not as say robust as some other companies in terms of like complexity. So it'd be great to know what people want us to dig into if they do like this segment as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

All right. Well, we hope to hear from you, get those comments coming, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Absolutely. Have a good one, Kelly.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Thanks, Sean. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

That's Media Monitor. Follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts every Wednesday for a new episode. And as always, thanks for listening.