The New York Times has become a digital-first success story, with digital subscriptions now driving majority revenue. The Athletic and Wordle acquisitions have expanded the subscriber bundle, powering consistent profitgrowth.
The New York Times generated a net income of $232 million in 2023, compared to almost $174 million in profits in 2022, nearly $220 million in 2021 and over $100 million in 2020.
The New York Times’ major individual shareholder is the Sulzberger family, owning it for several generations. Indeed, A. G. Sulzberger owns 1.4% of Class A and 94.6% of Class B stocks. The New York Times now runs primarily via a subscription-based model. Indeed, in 2023, of over $2.4 billion in total revenue, The NY Times generated 68% of its revenue from subscriptions ($1.65 billion).
The New York Times generated 68% of its revenue from subscriptions in 2023. Indeed, of over $2.4 billion in revenues in 2023, $1.65 billion came from subscriptions (both printed and digital), $505 million from advertising (printed and digital), and $264 million in other revenues. Of the subscription revenues, nearly $1.1 billion were generated by digital subscriptions, while printed subscriptions generated $556 million.
The New York Times generated $2.42 billion in revenues for 2023 and a net income of $232 million, compared to $2.3 billion in revenue in 2022 and $174 million in net income, over $2 billion in revenue in 2021 and $220 million in net profits in 2021.
The New York Times generated $2.4 billion in revenues in 2023, $1.65 billion came from subscriptions (both printed and digital), $505 million from advertising (printed and digital), and $264 million in other revenues.
The New York Times has further ramped up its journalism operations in the last three years. Indeed, as of 2023, of the total workforce, 45.7% were employed in journalism-related operations, compared to 45% in 2022, 40% in 2021, and 36% in 2020.
The New York Times reported 10.36 million subscribers in 2023, of which 9.70 million are digital subscribers and 660K are print subscribers. Compared to 9.55 subscribers in 2022, 8.83 million digital-only subscribers, and 730K print subscribers. Thus, digital subscribers accounted for over 92% of the total subscribers, whereas print subscribers only accounted for around 7.6% of the entire subscriber base.
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2023 – generated over $237.85 billion (over 77% of revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $31.5 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($33 billion).
Facebook, the main product of Meta, is an attention merchant. As such, its algorithms condense the attention of over three billion monthly active users as of 2023. Meta generated nearly $135 billion in revenues in 2023, of which nearly $132 billion was from advertising (97.8% of the total revenues), $1.9 billion from Reality Labs (the augmented and virtual reality products arm), and over $1 billion in other revenue.
Twitter makes money in two ways: advertising and data licensing. In 2021, Twitter generated $4.5 billion from advertising and $570 million from data licensing. While Twitter generated $5 billion in total revenues, it lost 221 million.
Medium is an online media platform leveraging the concept of social media for journalism, where writers are prompted to the platform to build their following through in-depth writings and essays. The platform follows a freemiummodel, and it makes money by prompting users to subscribe to articles behind paid walls (Medium charges $5/month or $50/year), and writers are paid based on readership.
Wikipedia is sustained by the Wikimedia Foundation, supported mostly by donations and contributions, which in 2021 amounted to over $153 million. Wikipedia is among the most popular websites on earth, and it is, as of these days, an open, non-profit project, on which twelve other projects have been developed.
WordPress.org became the most popular CMS and blogging platform in which the Foundation owns the trademark, and revenues come from donations. The Foundation holds a public benefit corporation that manages the revenues from WordPress events and conferences. Automaticc – the business arm – monetizes premium tools built on WordPress.com (a premium platform) through freemiums.
Squarespace is a North American hosting and website-building company. Founded in 2004 by college student Anthony Casalena as a blog hosting service, it grew to become of the most successful website-building companies. The company mostly makes money via its subscription plans. It also makes money via customizations on top of its subscription plans. And in part also transaction fees for the website where it processes the sales.
Wix is an Israeli provider of cloud-based web development services and is perhaps best known for its drag-and-drop website builder. Founded in 2006, the vision was to empower anyone to build their own site without coding, thus creating a drag-and-drop solution. Wix operates on a freemiummodel to attract customers to its platform, where those are prompted to enroll in one of its subscription plans.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur, HackerNoon and Search Engine People. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
Scroll to Top
Discover more from FourWeekMBA
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
