Digital props up New York Times revenue

NYTimes.com and sister site About.com recorded advertising gains of around a third on Tuesday, as web properties held up a print advertising downturn at the New York Times Company.

While figures showed overall advertising revenue across the Times' parent company fell 3.3 per cent in July on the previous year, bringing overall company revenue down 1.8 per cent, good news from two of the publisher's largest online stablemates buoyed the group.

"Our advertising results in July were adversely affected by the challenging print advertising market, especially in categories such as studio entertainment, automotive and corporate," said Janet Robinson, president and CEO, in a statement.

"In what is generally a seasonally weak month, we continued to experience healthy growth at our digital properties, particularly NYTimes.com and About.com, which both posted advertising gains of more than 30 per cenbt in July."

Publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are currently managing a downward trend in print advertising. In keeping with digital uptake, however, the Times' online increase was attributed to growth in both display and classified advertising income.

• By the start of 2005, online advertising surged to become the fourth-largest display advertising market in the UK, worth £1.3 billionn annually, according to an Ofcom report released last week.

Online advertising spend was three times greater than radio advertising and more than a third bigger than TV advertising. The communications regulator's Communications Market Report said: "Online advertising continues to grow in importance as a mass-marketing medium, attracting significant revenues away from other media."

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