NYT Ad Revenue Down As Ad Recession Sets In

Silicon Alley Insider:

The New York Times said advertising spending dropped severely in December and that the weakness has continued into January. National advertising okay, but classifieds and retailing getting hit.

* Total Q4 revenue (continuing ops) down 7% year over year, ads down 9%. Excluding an additional week in Q4 last year, total revenues down 2%, ads down 4%.
* December advertising down a shocking 12% in the month of December, even after excluding the additional week. Company says this weakness has continued into January.
* Operating income (continuing ops) down from $170 million to $160 million
* Online revenue growth decelerated to 18%, despite 35% growth at About.com. This suggests that online ad revenues at the news properties were very weak.
* Circ revenues up 3% (from price increases)

Hard to overstate how hard advertising got hit in December. Even the flagship New York Times business down 13% in the month (after adjusting for the additional week). This will obviously put the NYT company in an even more precarious position vis a vis angry investors. It also almost certainly suggests we will see (or soon see) a similar fall-off at other major media and Internet companies.

Read the whole story: Silicon Alley Insider

Comments

[Tator]

05:43 AM on 02/01/2008

When you do bogus hit pieces on our solders (murders), and revel national security secrets to help our enemies it does eventually come back to haunt you. I hope the Socialist/Communist rage goes under.

[johnnyjust]

12:43 AM on 02/01/2008

A recession is defined as six consequtive months of negative growth in the GDP. So far we've had none. More accurate to say sales are down because newspapers across the world are being affected by the internet. But who needs truth?

[nanotubz]

10:49 PM on 01/31/2008

If that were only true for commercial and cable networks.

[wadenelson1]

07:38 PM on 01/31/2008

How about:

"Ad Sales at NYTimes Decrease as Kristol settles In"