3 ms·

If they make an average of $15 per month from digital only subscribers, then that's $180,000,000 a year in revenues. Total subscription revenue for the NYTimes

by cm2012 11y ago

If they make an average of $15 per month from digital only subscribers, then that's $180,000,000 a year in revenues. Total subscription revenue for the NYTimes is around $800,000,000, so it's around 20% of total subscription revenue. Total advertising revenue was $700,000,000 ish, not sure how much of that is Digital but I imagine around 10%. So probably 12.5% of NYTimes revenue is from digital only - that's tough.

kbenson 11y ago
But if you split digital and physical subscriptions and look at profit compared to revenue, I imagine those digital subscriptions look pretty good. I imagine not having to print and deliver a physical product on a specific deadline makes a world of difference.
- lkrubner 11y ago
  That conclusion is not justified. Advertisers continue to pay a lot more for print. Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising. So profits can still be higher for the print version. Indeed, that is the whole problem that the newspaper/magazine industry is facing.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    What conclusion? That digital subscriptions look good because they have lower overhead? I don't imagine they come all that close to supporting the company yet, but I do imagine their profit to expenditure ratio is pretty good. > Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising. nytimes.com is actually in a good position to institute change in this are. I imagine if they rolled their own ad solution that was both not obtrusive and did not source the ads from third party servers (thus being much harder to block), they could possible leverage their name and the fact the ads weren't being blocked to charge a premium for ad-space.
- com2kid 11y ago
  How much do rich interactive digital articles cost to create versus a print article? That questions also changes the math.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, compared to a smaller up-front cost for typesetting plus a per issue cost of actually printing the paper. Unless your rich interactive article costs a lot, it should be cheaper at some point. The question is when.
    - com2kid 11y ago
      > But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I imagine the vast majority of benefits come from immediate usage. Interactive maps of data years old aren't that useful, such articles tend to create a lot of buzz when they are released but the benefit quickly fades away. is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? Technology isn't always cheaper. It'd be interesting to find out what the breakdown is here.
      - kbenson 11y ago
        > is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.

by cm2012 11y ago

kbenson 11y ago

But if you split digital and physical subscriptions and look at profit compared to revenue, I imagine those digital subscriptions look pretty good. I imagine not having to print and deliver a physical product on a specific deadline makes a world of difference.

lkrubner 11y ago
That conclusion is not justified. Advertisers continue to pay a lot more for print. Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising. So profits can still be higher for the print version. Indeed, that is the whole problem that the newspaper/magazine industry is facing.
- kbenson 11y ago
  What conclusion? That digital subscriptions look good because they have lower overhead? I don't imagine they come all that close to supporting the company yet, but I do imagine their profit to expenditure ratio is pretty good. > Nobody is willing to spend much for online advertising. nytimes.com is actually in a good position to institute change in this are. I imagine if they rolled their own ad solution that was both not obtrusive and did not source the ads from third party servers (thus being much harder to block), they could possible leverage their name and the fact the ads weren't being blocked to charge a premium for ad-space.
com2kid 11y ago
How much do rich interactive digital articles cost to create versus a print article? That questions also changes the math.
- kbenson 11y ago
  But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, compared to a smaller up-front cost for typesetting plus a per issue cost of actually printing the paper. Unless your rich interactive article costs a lot, it should be cheaper at some point. The question is when.
  - com2kid 11y ago
    > But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I imagine the vast majority of benefits come from immediate usage. Interactive maps of data years old aren't that useful, such articles tend to create a lot of buzz when they are released but the benefit quickly fades away. is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? Technology isn't always cheaper. It'd be interesting to find out what the breakdown is here.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      > is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.