Vedomosti has published a story about the business development plans of The New York Times CEO Mark Thompson. We chose the key points of the article, which will help to understand the strategy of publication.

Niche products for smartphones

The new CEO spent a lot of effort on the promotion of the publication with the help of applications for smartphones. Thompson launched a number of niche products, each of which was not only to bring profit, but also help sales of the digital subscription to The New York Times. Not all projects survived, but some remained on the market.
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The NYT VR app was launched in November 2015. This is about “immersion journalism”, when the viewer with the help of three-dimensional glasses is in the center of events. He can look back, sometimes even choose a point from which he looks at what is happening.

In March 2016, Thompson announced that the number of downloads of the NYT VR application, which he doubted in success, had reached 0.5 million.

The most successful online product of the publication was the NYT Cooking app.

The application was launched in September 2014 and is available only for the iPhone. A year later, Thompson told the magazine Advertising Age that he has more than 8 million unique visitors per month and their number is constantly growing.

In July of this year, it was announced that NYT Cooking is launching a service for the delivery of ingredients for self-catering. They are already packaged in the right quantity, so enough, referring to the recipe, mix them and put on the stove.

Non-core business

The New York Times is also involved in other related businesses. She sells wine, accessories with her logo, organizes conferences and even tours. In 2015, the publishing house earned $ 95 million in the non-core business. But the main thing for Thompson remains primarily the subscription and revenues from online advertising.

Paid subscription

The number of subscribers of the digital version of the publication is constantly growing - only in the II quarter of 2016, their number increased by 51,000.

In 2015, the online subscription brought The New York Times $ 193 million - 14% more than in 2014, writes Adweek magazine.

“We think it’s very useful to think of ourselves first and foremost as a business with a subscription model,” says Thompson.

The newspaper introduced paid access to articles in 2010 and by the end of 2011 managed to gain more than 320,000 subscribers willing to pay for its content, writes The Huffington Post. By the time Thompson came to the post of editor-in-chief, there were about 0.5 million, in 2015 a milestone of 1 million online subscribers was reached, and in the II quarter of this year there were already 1.4 million, writes FT, adding that the promise Thompson to bring the base of paid users to 1.5 million people by the end of the year looks more realistic.

Competition with new media: content and promotion

In 2014, after a semi-annual study, The New York Times released for internal use an Innovation Report on the future of the publication.

The term disruption appears in the report.

New media builds up the audience by offering cheap and low-quality materials, quickly publishing them after the event.

They are also actively experimenting with new formats and technologies. The culprits in the report are called BuzzFeed, Circa, ESPN, First Look Media, Flipboard, Vox and Yahoo News.

The New York Times can compete with them, attracting readers with other types of materials:

Forever up-to-date and repacking

Since its founding in 1851, almost 15 million materials have been published in the newspaper, some of them have acquired the value of classical literature. But even non-top materials can be sold again if the articles are properly packaged. For example, a well-read selection from past issues for Valentine's Day.

Short news reviews

“Since last year, we have been developing things like the morning information sheet. This is not a glimpse of two or three headlines for the editorial numbers of the printed number, but a compilation created to brief you on what happened the night before and on the news agenda for the day ahead. In New York, for example, this is news about the work of the transport system, weather and content for readers with different needs and different moods. ”

The New York Times publishes about 230 different kinds of materials on weekdays and about 330 on Sunday. We are talking only about the materials coming out of the pen of 1,300 journalists of the publication. Reprints of news agency messages are not included in these statistics, and there may be several hundred of them every day.

At the same time, Thompson is trying to preserve the paper circulation of the newspaper, writes FT. He is confident that on paper The New York Times will come out even "about 10 years or more."

Native advertising

Native advertising has become the fastest growing part of The New York Times advertising business, Thompson told Business Insider: “Already in the first year of operation in 2014, revenue was $ 13 million. In 2015, more than $ 35 million. In 2016, I expect $ 50 - $ 60 million.

In 2014, one of Thompson’s favorite divisions was opened - London-branded content studio T Brand Studio. She creates videos, photo galleries, articles and other types of native advertising. That is, advertising is not in the form of a picture with a slogan, but of journalistic material.

Buying marketing agencies

In March of this year, NYT acquired the HelloSociety marketing agency, working with social media stars. Thompson relies on synergy, Advertising Age magazine quotes him: “This social network has many very loyal customers who are not yet The New York Times customers, but we will be happy if they become them. And we have clients that we can bring to the HelloSociety. ”

Thompson is interested in companies that carry a set of marketing services that can be offered to The New York Times customers.

In September of this year, Thompson made another deal: The New York Times bought the Fake Love design studio, specializing in virtual (just for the NYT VR) and augmented (AR, it is used, for example, by the game Pokemon Go) reality.

Online advertising and adblock

In the II quarter of this year, advertising revenues of The New York Times fell by 12%. Advertising in the print version brought by 14.1% less, and in the digital - by 6.8% less. In the third quarter, the publication expects a further drop in advertising revenue.

At the same time, online advertising is the most important source of income for the digital version of the New York Times. According to Thompson, about 110 million people read the newspaper online; more than 1.5 million of them have no subscription.

In 2014, The New York Times received $ 400 million from online activities and Thompson decided to double this figure to $ 800 million by 2020.

In March 2016, The New York Times also joined in the fight against ad blockers. Subscribers began to show a pop-up window with a request to disable the lock.

For those who do not have a subscription, experienced two approaches. Notification, which can be removed by clicking the mouse, and a warning that disappears only after disabling the ad blocker or subscription.

More than 40% of non-subscribers, who received the last type of warning, put the NYT on the white list, i.e., blocking ads when entering the site is turned off, and users see it. At least 30% of subscribers did the same, receiving a cleared warning.

Strategy for the coming years - new products and new markets

The bet is made in two directions The first is to increase revenue from the American audience through new products like NYT Cooking.

The second is access to a new audience. The company is investing $ 50 million in international expansion, hoping to get readers in Latin America, Australia and Canada. Thompson believes that millions of potential subscribers are waiting for him there.