The New York Times Company today reported second-quarter digital advertising revenues of $114.0 million, a 20.7 percent year-over-year increase that cleared the high-teens growth range the publisher had guided to, while print advertising fell 11.1 percent and adjusted operating costs ran a full point above plan.

The figures, released on August 5, 2026 ahead of an 8:00 a.m. Eastern conference call, describe a publisher whose advertising business is expanding faster than its own forecasts at the same moment that the referral economy underpinning most open-web publishing continues to contract. Digital advertising has now grown at 18.7 percent, 20.3 percent, 24.9 percent, 31.6 percent and 20.7 percent across the last five reported quarters. Few publishers of comparable scale have posted a comparable sequence.

Total revenues reached $762.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2026, up 11.2 percent from $685.9 million a year earlier. Operating profit rose 10.8 percent to $118.0 million. Adjusted operating profit, which strips out depreciation, amortization, severance, multiemployer pension withdrawal costs and special items, grew 16.1 percent to $155.3 million.

The advertising line, in detail

Total advertising revenues for the quarter came in at $149.1 million, an increase of 11.3 percent against $134.0 million in the second quarter of 2025. That total splits into two lines moving in opposite directions.

Digital advertising revenues reached $113,961 thousand against $94,422 thousand a year earlier, according to the company's condensed consolidated statements of operations. Print advertising revenues fell to $35,162 thousand from $39,552 thousand, a decline of 11.1 percent. Across the first six months of 2026, digital advertising totalled $207.2 million against $165.3 million in the same period of 2025, growth of 25.4 percent, while print advertising fell 10.5 percent to $68.7 million.

The digital gain is attributed in the earnings release to strong marketer demand and growth in advertising supply. Both halves of that formulation matter for buyers. Supply growth means more inventory available to transact against; demand strength means the inventory cleared at prices the company found satisfactory. The release does not break out the relative contribution of volume versus rate.

How the quarter compared with plan

The company had guided second-quarter digital advertising to high-teens growth and total advertising to high-single-digit growth. Actuals came in at 20.7 percent and 11.3 percent respectively. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues had been guided to low-single-digit growth and landed at 7.1 percent. Digital-only subscription revenues, guided to a 14 to 17 percent range, landed at 16.4 percent. Total subscription revenues, guided at 10 to 12 percent, came in at 11.7 percent.

One line missed in the other direction. Adjusted operating costs had been guided to increase 8 to 9 percent and increased 10.0 percent.

Chief financial officer Will Bardeen addressed the pattern directly in prepared remarks. "Marketer demand in the quarter for our high performing ad products exceeded our expectations," he said. On costs, he attributed the overshoot to a specific mechanism: "Cost growth exceeded our guidance range primarily due to incremental variable compensation tied to financial outperformance."

The two statements are linked. Advertising revenue beat expectations; incentive compensation tied to that revenue rose accordingly; the cost line moved past guidance as a consequence of the revenue line moving past guidance.

What drove the digital gain

President and chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien described the drivers on the earnings call in portfolio terms rather than format terms. "We are in now a number of big spaces that have a lot of appeal to marketers," she said. "We have differentiated coverage and products in those spaces. I will just say that growth in the quarter came from across the portfolio. Everything sort of working at the same time."

She identified news, games and sports as the areas with the greatest scale of engagement, while stating that growth was not concentrated there alone. On the mechanics of retention within the advertiser base, her formulation was blunt: "Campaigns renew because the ads perform."

The company also disclosed a structural addition to its sales organisation during the quarter. A new middle market advertising sales team was staffed in 2026 to reach a segment of demand the publisher had not previously served, and the associated compensation contributed to the increase in the sales and marketing line. That detail is relevant to any buyer or agency operating below the enterprise threshold, because it signals the publisher is now building coverage for accounts that would previously have transacted only programmatically or not at all.

Video is not yet the ad story

Asked whether video investment was beginning to contribute meaningfully to advertising revenue, Kopit Levien was explicit that it is not. "It's playing a relatively minor role in the growth in advertising so far," she said, "and you're going to see us really focus on scaling production, scaling engagement, and then scaling monetization, but minor role so far."

That sequencing statement - production, then engagement, then monetization - sets expectations for how long the video build will take to appear in the revenue lines. The company is spending on it now and describing the payoff as a long-term matter.

Subscriptions decelerate while revenue per user accelerates

The New York Times Company ended the second quarter with approximately 13.35 million subscribers across print and digital products, including approximately 12.80 million digital-only subscribers. Net digital-only additions in the quarter were approximately 280,000.

That figure sits at the low end of the recent run. Quarterly net additions across the last five reported periods were 230,000 in the second quarter of 2025, 460,000 in the third quarter of 2025, 450,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, 310,000 in the first quarter of 2026 and 280,000 in the second quarter of 2026. Compared with the end of the second quarter of 2025, the digital-only base expanded by approximately 1,500,000 subscribers.

Print subscribers continued their slow contraction, moving from 580,000 in the second quarter of 2025 to 550,000 in the second quarter of 2026 across the five-quarter series.

Digital-only average revenue per user reached $9.94, up 3.1 percent year-over-year and up from $9.77 in the first quarter of 2026. The company calculates ARPU by dividing digital-only subscription revenues in the quarter by the average number of digital-only subscribers, then dividing by the number of days in the quarter and multiplying by 28 to reflect a 28-day billing cycle.

Digital-only subscription revenues rose 16.4 percent to $407.9 million. Print subscription revenues fell 0.8 percent to $130.0 million, attributed to lower single-copy and domestic home-delivery revenues. Total subscription revenues increased 11.7 percent to $537.9 million.

The pricing machinery behind ARPU

Two mechanisms are driving the ARPU line, according to the earnings release: subscribers transitioning from promotional to higher prices, and price increases applied to certain tenured subscribers.

Bardeen supplied a figure for the second mechanism on the call. A digital bundle price increase first discussed in the first quarter of 2026 moved a cohort of tenured subscribers from 25 to 30. The benefit began appearing in the first quarter and continued into the second.

He also flagged a cohort effect that will weigh on the third quarter. The paywalling of The Mini in the third quarter of 2025 added a contribution from lower-priced single-product subscriptions a year ago, which affects subscriber mix in the comparable period this year. That mix effect is one reason third-quarter digital-only subscription revenue guidance sits below recent performance.

Bardeen grouped the drivers of digital subscription revenue into three categories on the call: subscriber growth over the prior twelve months, the mix between higher-priced bundle subscriptions and lower-priced single-product subscriptions, and pricing step-up performance covering both promotional roll-off and price increases.

The longer arc is visible in the five-year series the company published. Digital-only subscribers moved from 8.41 million in the second quarter of 2022 to 9.19 million, 10.21 million, 11.30 million and 12.80 million in the corresponding quarters of the following four years. Digital-only subscription revenues over the same points moved from $239 million to $270 million, $305 million, $350 million and $408 million.

How the company counts a subscriber

The headline subscriber figure carries definitional detail that matters when comparing it against other publishers, and the company sets that detail out in its supplemental disclosures rather than in the headline highlights.

A subscriber is defined as a user who has subscribed, and for whom a valid method of payment has been provided, for the right to access one or more of the company's products. Subscribers holding a domestic home-delivery print subscription, which includes access to the digital products, are excluded from the digital-only count and reported separately as print subscribers.

The digital-only count includes group corporate subscriptions, group education subscriptions, and subscribers attached to family subscriptions. The number of group subscribers is not a headcount taken from the customer. It is derived using the value of the relevant contract and a discounted subscription rate. Family subscriptions, priced above a comparable individual subscription, are counted as one billed subscriber plus one additional subscriber to reflect the additional entitlements included.

Two consequences follow for anyone using the figure as a comparison benchmark. First, the digital-only total is not a count of paying accounts alone; it includes derived and entitlement-based additions. Second, subscribers and net subscriber additions are rounded to the nearest ten thousand, which is why quarterly net additions appear as round figures such as 280,000 and 310,000 rather than exact counts.

The subscription bundle itself spans the digital news product, comprising the news website and mobile applications, alongside The Athletic and the Audio, Cooking, Games and Wirecutter products. Standalone digital subscriptions to each of those products are also available and are counted within the same digital-only total, which is the mix effect the chief financial officer referred to when discussing the composition of subscription revenue growth.

A rounding difference worth noting

The earnings release and the prepared remarks state the total subscriber figure differently. The release and the earnings presentation give 13.35 million total subscribers. The prepared remarks and the call transcript give 13.4 million. Both are consistent with a base rounded from the same underlying number at different precisions, and the supplemental table confirms 13,350 thousand as the reported total. Readers reconciling the two documents should treat the 13.35 million figure from the financial statements as the reported value.

The news agenda inside the quarter

Engagement at a news publisher is partly a function of what happened in the world, and the company itemised the second quarter's agenda in prepared remarks.

Journalists covered the ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, escalating drone warfare between Ukraine and Russia, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence models. Domestic coverage included the United States primaries. International coverage included a historic heat wave in Europe. Two New York events were singled out: the Knicks winning a first championship in more than fifty years, and the marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Kopit Levien framed that spread deliberately, describing coverage running from politics to pop culture and from wildfires to wellness. The framing matters commercially because the company's advertising proposition rests on category breadth rather than news alone. Marketer demand was attributed across the portfolio rather than to any single vertical, and the products carrying that demand span current events, sports, cooking, games and shopping.

The second quarter of 2026 therefore combined a heavy hard-news cycle with a global sporting event and two high-attention cultural moments. That combination is not a repeatable input, which is one reason the company describes advertising as variable quarter to quarter while treating it as a long-term growth driver.

The World Cup quarter

The second quarter of 2026 contained the group stage and most of the knockout rounds of the FIFA World Cup, and the company's sports vertical was built around it.

Kopit Levien said The Athletic deployed over 70 soccer experts drawn from a 550-person sports newsroom, covering the tournament across 16 cities. The publisher produced a daily long-form World Cup show distributed on Amazon, daily short-form recaps on social platforms and in its own app, live updates and insights for all 104 matches, and interactive brackets. She described the result as The Athletic's biggest audiences ever, and said the company expects those gains to carry into the NFL season.

The tournament also drew marketing spend. The company said it leaned into marketing around the World Cup during the quarter, one of the two components inside the 23.6 percent increase in sales and marketing costs, the other being advertising-related compensation and cost of goods sold.

Independent measurement placed the tournament's television advertising footprint in context. World Cup advertising reached more than 25 billion television ad impressions across United States rights holders, with United States men's national team matches drawing 70 percent of FOX tournament viewers, according to iSpot figures published on August 1, 2026. Ahead of the tournament, Video Advertising Bureau research had projected 63.9 million American adults would watch across the five-week June 11 to July 19 window. FIFA had separately approved advertising during three-minute water breaks across all 104 matches, creating an in-game inventory category that did not exist in previous editions.

The Athletic's own distribution expanded during the same period. Fubo opened six of the publication's shows to sponsors through The Athletic Video Hub on July 23, 2026, marking the first time The Athletic's video library reached connected television.

Costs: where the money went

Total operating costs increased 11.2 percent to $644.4 million from $579.3 million. Adjusted operating costs increased 10.0 percent to $607.2 million from $552.1 million.

The four principal cost lines moved as follows. Cost of revenue, excluding depreciation and amortization, rose 8.6 percent to $367.8 million, attributed primarily to higher compensation and benefits expenses relating to journalism. Sales and marketing costs rose 23.6 percent to $85.5 million. Product development costs rose 10.0 percent to $70.4 million, attributed to compensation and benefits alongside higher software and licensing expenses. General and administrative costs rose 3.9 percent to $85.8 million, with higher compensation and benefits partially offset by a net favorable impact from foreign currency cash flow hedges.

Adjusted general and administrative costs, which exclude severance and multiemployer pension withdrawal costs, rose 4.0 percent to $83.5 million from $80.2 million.

On the presentation's stacked view of adjusted operating costs, cost of revenue moved from $339 million to $368 million, sales and marketing from $69 million to $86 million, product development from $64 million to $70 million, and adjusted general and administrative from $80 million to $83 million.

Depreciation and amortization fell 1.3 percent to $21.1 million. Severance rose 17.2 percent to $1.172 million. Multiemployer pension plan withdrawal costs fell 14.9 percent to $1.138 million.

Two special items

Second-quarter operating costs included $4.6 million of pre-tax litigation-related costs connected to lawsuits alleging unlawful and unauthorized copying and use of the company's journalism and other content in the development of generative artificial intelligence products. That figure represents $3.4 million after tax, or $0.02 per share, and compares with $3.5 million in the same quarter of 2025, an increase of 32.6 percent. Across the first six months of 2026, these costs totalled $8.8 million against $7.9 million in the first half of 2025.

Management has reported these costs as a special item since the first quarter of 2024, on the basis that they arise from discrete, complex and unusual proceedings and do not reflect ongoing business operational performance.

The second special item was new. A $9.2 million charge, $6.8 million or $0.04 per share after tax, was recorded in connection with the company's withdrawal from a multiemployer pension plan. No comparable charge appeared in the second quarter of 2025, although a $4.5 million multiemployer pension liability adjustment was recorded in the first six months of that year.

Profit, margin and per-share results

Operating profit rose 10.8 percent to $118.0 million. Operating profit margin was flat year-over-year at 15.5 percent. Adjusted operating profit margin expanded approximately 90 basis points to 20.4 percent from 19.5 percent.

The gap between those two margin figures is the two special items plus depreciation, amortization, severance and pension withdrawal costs. Without the $9.2 million pension charge and the $4.6 million litigation charge, reported operating profit would have been meaningfully higher, which is why the reported margin held flat while the adjusted margin expanded.

Interest income and other, net was $10.8 million against $9.8 million, attributed to higher cash and marketable securities balances. Other components of net periodic benefit costs were negative $3.6 million against negative $4.6 million.

Income before income taxes reached $125.2 million, up 12.1 percent. Income tax expense was $31.8 million against $28.7 million, with an effective rate of 25.4 percent against 25.7 percent a year earlier. Both rates exceeded the federal statutory rate, primarily due to state and local income taxes, partially offset by federal tax credits for research and development.

Net income was $93.4 million, up 12.6 percent from $82.9 million.

Diluted earnings per share was $0.57, up $0.07. Adjusted diluted EPS was $0.69, up $0.11, representing 19.0 percent growth. Diluted shares outstanding fell 0.8 percent to 163.0 million. Basic earnings per share was $0.58 against $0.51.

For the first six months, diluted EPS reached $1.11 against $0.80, growth of 38.8 percent, and adjusted diluted EPS reached $1.31 against $0.99.

The six-month picture

The half-year figures show a wider gap between reported and adjusted performance than the quarter alone, because the prior-year comparison carried its own special items.

Total revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2026 reached $1,474.7 million against $1,321.8 million, growth of 11.6 percent. Subscription revenues reached $1,054.8 million, up 11.5 percent, of which digital-only subscription revenues were $797.0 million, up 16.3 percent, and print subscription revenues were $257.8 million, down 1.0 percent. Advertising revenues reached $275.9 million, up 14.0 percent. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues reached $144.0 million, up 7.4 percent.

Total operating costs for the half were $1,266.1 million, up 9.5 percent, and adjusted operating costs were $1,201.5 million, up 9.7 percent. Cost of revenue rose 8.5 percent to $730.8 million. Sales and marketing rose 20.5 percent to $162.8 million. Product development rose 7.7 percent to $140.5 million. General and administrative rose 6.0 percent to $172.2 million.

Operating profit for the half reached $208.6 million against $165.2 million, growth of 26.3 percent, with operating profit margin at 14.1 percent against 12.5 percent, an expansion of 160 basis points. Adjusted operating profit reached $273.2 million against $226.5 million, growth of 20.6 percent, with adjusted operating profit margin at 18.5 percent against 17.1 percent, an expansion of 140 basis points.

Net income for the half was $181.3 million against $132.5 million, growth of 36.9 percent. That figure is flattered by the tax line: income tax expense fell 2.2 percent to $42.2 million despite pre-tax income rising 27.3 percent to $223.5 million. Income before income taxes and income tax expense therefore moved in opposite directions across the half, which is why half-year net income growth substantially exceeds half-year operating profit growth.

Seasonality and the quarterly series

The five-quarter series published alongside the results shows a business with pronounced fourth-quarter concentration, which is relevant to anyone extrapolating from a single period.

Total revenues across the last five reported quarters ran $685.9 million, $700.8 million, $802.3 million, $712.2 million and $762.5 million. The fourth quarter of 2025 remains the largest single period in the series by a margin of roughly $40 million over the quarter just reported.

Digital advertising revenues followed a sharper version of the same shape: $94.4 million, $98.1 million, $147.2 million, $93.3 million and $114.0 million. The fourth quarter of 2025 carried nearly 30 percent more digital advertising revenue than any other period in the series, a pattern consistent with holiday-quarter demand across the wider display and video market.

Operating profit ran $106.6 million, $104.8 million, $161.6 million, $90.6 million and $118.0 million. Adjusted operating profit ran $133.8 million, $131.4 million, $192.3 million, $117.9 million and $155.3 million. Adjusted operating profit margin ran 19.5 percent, 18.7 percent, 24.0 percent, 16.6 percent and 20.4 percent. Diluted earnings per share ran $0.50, $0.50, $0.79, $0.54 and $0.57.

Subscription revenue is the steadiest line in the set, rising in every period: digital-only subscription revenues moved $350.4 million, $367.4 million, $381.5 million, $389.0 million and $407.9 million, with year-over-year growth of 15.1 percent, 14.0 percent, 13.9 percent, 16.1 percent and 16.4 percent. Digital-only ARPU across the same points ran $9.64, $9.79, $9.72, $9.77 and $9.94, a series that dipped in the fourth quarter of 2025 before resuming its climb.

The divergence between the two revenue engines is visible in those sequences. Subscription revenue compounds. Advertising revenue oscillates around a rising trend. Total operating costs, meanwhile, ran $579.3 million, $596.0 million, $640.7 million, $621.6 million and $644.4 million, with year-over-year growth accelerating from 6.2 percent in the second quarter of 2025 to 11.2 percent in the quarter just reported.

Cash, buybacks and the tax benefit

As of June 30, 2026, the company held cash and marketable securities of $1.22 billion, an increase of $48.5 million from $1.17 billion at December 31, 2025. A $400 million unsecured revolving line of credit remained undrawn, and the company reported no other outstanding debt.

Net cash provided by operating activities in the first six months was $286.5 million against $212.7 million in the same period of 2025. Free cash flow for the half was $265.7 million against $193.2 million. The prior-year comparison includes approximately $33 million in net proceeds from the lease and subsequent sale of roughly four acres of excess land at the printing and distribution facility in College Point, New York, finalised in February 2025.

On a trailing twelve-month basis, free cash flow reached $623.0 million at June 30, 2026 against $455.2 million a year earlier. The intermediate readings were $536.5 million at September 30, 2025, $550.5 million at December 31, 2025 and $542.2 million at March 31, 2026.

Part of that improvement is legislative rather than operational. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act produced lower cash tax payments of $65 million for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. The company expects approximately $60 million in total for fiscal 2026 and does not expect the majority of the benefit to recur beyond that year. Bardeen flagged a second timing caveat in prepared remarks, noting that first-half free cash flow benefited from working capital timing, some of which the company expects to reverse in the second half.

During the quarter the company repurchased 473,691 shares of Class A common stock for approximately $35.4 million. As of July 31, 2026, approximately $239.7 million remained available and authorized. Across the first half, the company returned approximately $160 million to shareholders, split between roughly $92 million in repurchases and roughly $68 million in dividends. Dividends declared per share were $0.23 for the quarter against $0.18 a year earlier, an increase of 27.8 percent.

The stated capital allocation policy is to return at least 50 percent of free cash flow to shareholders over the mid-term.

Capital expenditures totalled approximately $10 million in each of the second quarters of 2026 and 2025.

Affiliate, licensing and other revenues

This line increased 7.1 percent to $75.5 million from $70.5 million. The company attributed the outperformance primarily to higher Wirecutter affiliate referral revenues, which benefited from a shift in the timing of a marketing promotion by one of its partners.

That timing shift has a forward consequence. The promotion occurred in the second quarter this year and in the third quarter last year, which pulls revenue into the reported period and removes it from the coming one. Third-quarter guidance for this line accounts for the shift.

Digital affiliate, licensing and other revenues, consisting primarily of Wirecutter affiliate referral revenue and digital licensing revenues, totalled $50.1 million for the quarter and $95.3 million for the first six months. The wider line also includes commercial printing, the leasing of floors in the company headquarters, the live events business and retail commerce.

The licensing component sits at the intersection of the publisher's two postures toward artificial intelligence companies: litigation against some, commercial agreements with others. On the call, an analyst noted that the company had comped the Amazon artificial intelligence agreement signed the previous year. Bardeen described the line as a mix of licensing deals, affiliate revenue, books, television, film and commercial printing that can create lumpiness quarter to quarter, and said the company was pleased with licensing without unpacking it further.

Guidance for the third quarter

The company issued the following guidance for the third quarter of 2026 against the third quarter of 2025:

  • Digital-only subscription revenues: increase 12 to 15 percent
  • Total subscription revenues: increase 9 to 11 percent
  • Digital advertising revenues: increase mid-to-high-teens
  • Total advertising revenues: increase high-single-to-low-double-digits
  • Affiliate, licensing and other revenues: increase low-to-mid-single-digits
  • Adjusted operating costs: increase 8 to 9 percent

For the full year on a pre-tax basis, the company expects depreciation and amortization of approximately $85 million, including $25 million to $30 million of acquired intangible assets amortization; interest income and other, net of approximately $45 million to $50 million; and capital expenditures of approximately $35 million to $45 million.

The digital advertising guide of mid-to-high-teens growth sits below the 20.7 percent just delivered. Kopit Levien supplied the reason on the call: "we are lapping, to your question about structural drivers, we're lapping strong growth in supply in the back half of the year from last year." Supply expansion in the second half of 2025 raises the comparison base for the second half of 2026. She added that the advertising business "can be a little variable quarter to quarter" while describing continued confidence in its role as a long-term growth driver.

The 12 to 15 percent digital subscription guide also sits below the 16.4 percent just reported, for the cohort and mix reasons described above.

The traffic problem the company named itself

The most consequential passage in the prepared remarks was not a number.

"I'll close by noting that we delivered our Q2 results against the backdrop of a rapidly changing information ecosystem shaped by a small number of big tech companies whose moves continue to result in less traffic to publishers," Kopit Levien said. "The Times isn't immune to that impact."

Asked to expand during the question-and-answer session, she went further on strategic intent. "I'll just say that our aim in all this over time is to become less reliant on the intermediaries," she said. "You should imagine we are always calibrating between making our work available widely so that people can sample it and to make sure we're doing that in a way that isn't substitutional."

That last clause is the operative one for anyone tracking publisher-platform economics. Sampling means enough exposure to convert a reader; substitutional means enough exposure that the reader never needs the source. The distinction governs how much content a publisher permits into search results, artificial intelligence summaries and syndication partnerships, and it is the same calculation now being run at every large news organisation.

She listed four enduring advantages the company believes give it resilience: products in large spaces with passionate daily audiences across current events, sports, cooking, games and shopping; membership of a shrinking group of news organisations doing original independent reporting at scale; a track record of using technology to distribute stories across text, audio, interactive graphics and video; and a multi-revenue-stream model offering complementary ways to monetise engagement.

She also declined to discuss the company's posture toward large language model licensing deals when an analyst raised reports of platforms reconsidering such arrangements over traffic impact.

What the referral data shows

The context Kopit Levien described has been quantified repeatedly over the past eighteen months, and the numbers are not marginal.

Reach plc, the largest commercial news publisher in Britain, reported that Google referral volumes fell 55 percent year on year while on-platform page views fell 40 percent and revenue per thousand page views rose 49 percent, in half-year results published on July 22, 2026. Group revenue fell 9.0 percent to 232.9 million pounds. That report landed on the same day Alphabet reported second-quarter revenue of $119.8 billion.

Google Search advertising revenue rose 17 percent to $63.3 billion in that quarter while the Google Network segment covering AdSense, AdMob and Ad Manager slipped 1 percent to $7.3 billion. The Network line is the one that pays open-web publishers, and it has now contracted through multiple consecutive quarters. It fell 4 percent year-over-year to $6.97 billion in the first quarter of 2026 even as Alphabet's consolidated revenue rose 22 percent.

The mechanism connecting those figures has been measured directly. A randomized field experiment with 1,065 desktop Chrome users found that Google's AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8 percent and raised zero-click searches by 34.5 percent when the feature appeared, with no measurable difference in bounce rate, back-navigation or time on page between groups. That study, published in April 2026 and revised in June, addressed the methodological objection that earlier before-and-after comparisons could not isolate AI Overviews from other simultaneous changes.

Ahrefs research published in February 2026 found AI Overviews correlate with a 58 percent reduction in click-through rates for top-ranking pages, close to double the 34.5 percent measured in April 2025. Seer Interactive research covering 3,119 informational queries across 42 organisations found organic click-through rates on AI Overview queries fell 61 percent between June 2024 and September 2025, with paid click-through rates on the same queries falling 68 percent.

Not every vertical is equally exposed. Index Exchange analysis found news publishers experienced a 7 percent decline in advertising opportunities against far steeper contractions in health and education categories, within an overall average 14 percent year-over-year decline across 69 percent of publishers on its platform through 2025. Chartbeat data covering more than 2,500 sites showed small publishers lost 60 percent of search traffic across two years while chatbot referrals remained below 1 percent of total publisher page views.

Against that backdrop, a publisher reporting 20.7 percent digital advertising growth and 16.4 percent digital subscription growth is describing a different set of conditions than most of the market.

What the company tells regulators about the same risk

The forward-looking statements section of the release lists the risk factors the company considers material, and several map directly onto the dynamics described on the call.

Among them: dependence on third-party platforms for attracting, retaining and monetizing a significant portion of users, and for the ability to maintain and grow licensing revenues; dependence on user and other metrics subject to inherent challenges in measurement; numerous factors affecting advertising revenues including market dynamics, evolving digital advertising trends and the evolution of strategy; risks associated with generative artificial intelligence technology; claims of intellectual property infringement against the company, alongside the company's own ability to protect its intellectual property; the ability to comply with evolving privacy, data protection and consumer marketing and subscriptions regulation; and liabilities that may result from participation in multiemployer pension plans.

That last item is not abstract in this quarter. The $9.2 million withdrawal charge is the disclosed risk becoming a recorded expense.

The list also names dependence on continued and unimpeded access to the internet and cloud-based hosting services, the impact of labour negotiations and collective bargaining agreements, potential limits on operating flexibility due to the fixed nature of employee-related and printing and distribution costs, and the concentration of control arising from the dual-class capital structure.

Read alongside the chief executive's remarks about intermediaries, the platform-dependence disclosure is the same statement in regulatory language. The company is telling investors that a material portion of user acquisition, retention and licensing revenue depends on entities it does not control, and telling analysts that reducing that dependence is the strategic objective.

The litigation line as a business metric

The $4.6 million of generative artificial intelligence litigation costs is a small number inside a $644.4 million cost base, but it is the accounting trace of a legal position with commercial consequences.

The consolidated proceedings in the Southern District of New York involve The New York Times Company alongside other newspaper plaintiffs against OpenAI and Microsoft. Discovery in that matter has produced its own sequence of disclosures. A federal judge denied OpenAI's request to pause an order requiring production of 20 million anonymized ChatGPT conversation logs on November 13, 2025, following an order issued six days earlier. On July 10, 2026, several media outlets including the publisher asked a federal judge to sanction OpenAI for what the filing called discovery misconduct, alleging the withholding of datasets and chat logs.

The litigation costs have been rising rather than tapering: $3.5 million in the second quarter of 2025, $4.6 million in the second quarter of 2026, and $8.8 million across the first half against $7.9 million in the prior-year half. On a per-share basis the special item moved from $0.02 to $0.03.

Publishers have been arriving at different answers to the same question. CNN filed suit against Perplexity in the Southern District of New York on May 28, 2026, alleging copying of 17,000 works. Others have signed licensing agreements. News Corp reported artificial intelligence content partnerships alongside digital subscriptions reaching 62 percent of revenue in results published in November 2025. The New York Times Company is doing both, litigating against one set of counterparties while licensing to another, and its financial statements now carry a line item for each posture.

Video: the strategic bet with no revenue attached yet

The company launched a Shows tab in its flagship app during the week of the earnings release, according to the prepared remarks. It sits alongside an existing Watch tab and is intended to house long-form franchises across news, opinion, culture and lifestyle.

Kopit Levien described four areas of video production growth: reporter video, news clips, visual investigations, and shows. She described reporter video as the format the company is doing particularly well, where a journalist producing a conventional article or live blog also produces an explanation of what the reporting found and how it was obtained. Her stated rationale was that the format gets information out in a form that appeals to viewers while being humanising and trust-building.

On visual investigations, she cited work reconstructing the bombing of a school in Minab, Iran, discussed on the previous quarter's call, as an example of assembling available video into an account of an event. She characterised the shows footprint as early, with a portfolio spanning politics, culture and business that the company intends to expand.

The company said it is now producing thousands of new videos each quarter. Asked about competitive conditions in video given engagement pressure at Netflix, YouTube investment outside creator video and social platforms funding short-form, Kopit Levien answered that those trends are consistent with the company's direction of travel.

Bardeen framed the investment case in addressable market terms in prepared remarks. "We believe video allows us to have an even greater impact with the journalistic investment we are making by penetrating a large and new addressable market for us," he said.

The move is not isolated among news organisations. Business Insider selected Magnite's SpringServe platform to power ad serving for a standalone connected television channel on July 21, 2026, extending its video operation beyond the YouTube channels where it built an audience of 38 million subscribers. Magnite reported that connected television contribution excluding traffic acquisition costs crossed 51 percent of its total net revenue metric in the first quarter of 2026, up from 43 percent a year earlier, an indication of where programmatic video budgets are moving.

Product changes during the quarter

Beyond video, the company listed several product moves in prepared remarks. A series of upgrades to the flagship news app began during the quarter, aimed at making the app more compelling for prospective subscribers rather than only for existing ones. New listening and commenting features launched in that app. A cook mode shipped in the Cooking product. New features marked the fifth anniversary of Wordle. Additional features were added to Crossplay.

The company also confirmed a local news product launched in at least one market. Kopit Levien characterised it as an experiment conducted in collaboration with a local player, framed as supportive of a broader local journalism ecosystem rather than as a competitive entry. No market, partner or financial detail was disclosed.

Reading the non-GAAP measures

Five non-GAAP measures appear across the release, presentation and remarks, and the differences between them and their GAAP equivalents account for most of the gap between the reported and adjusted narratives of the quarter.

Adjusted operating profit is operating profit before depreciation, amortization, severance, multiemployer pension plan withdrawal costs and special items. Adjusted operating profit margin is that figure divided by revenues. Adjusted operating costs is operating costs before the same set of exclusions. Adjusted diluted EPS is diluted EPS excluding amortization of acquired intangible assets, severance, non-operating retirement costs and special items. Free cash flow is net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures.

The bridge from operating profit to adjusted operating profit in the quarter runs as follows: $118.0 million of operating profit, plus $21.1 million of depreciation and amortization, plus $1.172 million of severance, plus $1.138 million of multiemployer pension plan withdrawal costs, plus $4.6 million of generative artificial intelligence litigation costs, plus $9.2 million of multiemployer pension plan liability adjustments, arriving at $155.3 million.

The bridge from diluted EPS to adjusted diluted EPS runs from $0.57, adding $0.04 for amortization of acquired intangible assets, $0.01 for severance, $0.01 for multiemployer pension plan withdrawal costs, $0.02 for other components of net periodic benefit costs, $0.03 for generative artificial intelligence litigation costs and $0.06 for multiemployer pension plan liability adjustments, then subtracting $0.04 for the income tax expense of those adjustments, arriving at $0.69. The company notes amounts may not add due to rounding.

Management states that non-operating retirement costs are excluded because they are primarily tied to financial market performance, including changes in market interest rates and investment performance, rather than to business operations. Severance is excluded on the basis that it fluctuates significantly quarter to quarter and does not necessarily reflect expected future operating costs.

Certain guidance is issued on a non-GAAP basis without reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, on the stated grounds that the company cannot provide the necessary calculation without unreasonable effort given the difficulty of forecasting the excluded amounts. The third-quarter adjusted operating cost guidance of 8 to 9 percent falls into that category.

Why this matters for the advertising market

For media buyers, three specific things changed in this report.

Supply expanded. The earnings release names growth in advertising supply as a driver of the digital advertising increase alongside marketer demand. More inventory at a premium news and lifestyle publisher, in a market where Index Exchange measured ad opportunity declines across most publishers on its platform, is a change in available options rather than a change in price alone.

Coverage extended downmarket. The staffing of a middle market sales team means direct-sold access at this publisher now reaches advertisers who previously fell below the threshold for enterprise coverage. The commercial terms have not been disclosed, but the existence of the team is a disclosed fact.

The comparison base gets harder. Third-quarter guidance of mid-to-high-teens digital advertising growth, against 20.7 percent delivered, reflects the company lapping supply expansion from the second half of 2025. Buyers modelling inventory availability at this publisher through the back half should account for a base effect that the company has named explicitly.

There is a fourth consideration that sits outside the guidance tables. This publisher has been building addressable capability that does not depend on third-party identifiers. New York Times Advertising disclosed its first data clean room collaboration on June 21, 2026, reporting a 20 percent uplift in Quality Visit Rate, a 61 percent increase in international click-through rate and a 25 percent performance uplift in the United States, all achieved without third-party cookies. A publisher with 12.80 million logged-in digital-only subscribers holds a first-party data position that few open-web properties can match, and the clean room result is the first public performance evidence attached to it.

The comparison set

The second-quarter reporting season provides direct comparison points across the demand side of the same market.

Meta reported second-quarter advertising revenue of $59.36 billion, up 27 percent, with ad impressions across its Family of Apps rising 14 percent and average price per ad climbing 12 percent, while net income fell 8 percent as legal costs absorbed the gains. Reddit reported second-quarter advertising revenue of $762 million, up 64 percent. Snap reported advertising revenue growth of 9 percent with average ad prices up 10 percent on August 3, 2026. Netflix confirmed it remains on track for approximately $3 billion in advertising revenue for 2026, roughly double the prior year.

Against platforms operating at that scale, $114.0 million in quarterly digital advertising is a small absolute number. The growth rate, and the fact that it was generated on inventory the publisher owns and populates with journalism it commissions, is what distinguishes it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), led by president and chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien and executive vice president and chief financial officer Will Bardeen, with senior vice president of investor relations Anthony DiClemente hosting the call. The results concern advertisers, media buyers and agencies transacting against the publisher's inventory, and publishers benchmarking subscription and advertising performance in a contracting referral environment.

What: Second-quarter 2026 results showing total revenues of $762.5 million, up 11.2 percent; digital advertising revenues of $114.0 million, up 20.7 percent and above the high-teens guidance range; total advertising revenues of $149.1 million, up 11.3 percent; print advertising down 11.1 percent to $35.2 million; digital-only subscription revenues of $407.9 million, up 16.4 percent; approximately 280,000 net digital-only subscriber additions to a base of 12.80 million; digital-only ARPU of $9.94, up 3.1 percent; adjusted operating profit of $155.3 million, up 16.1 percent; adjusted operating profit margin of 20.4 percent, up approximately 90 basis points; adjusted diluted EPS of $0.69, up $0.11; and adjusted operating costs up 10.0 percent, above the 8 to 9 percent guidance range. Special items comprised $4.6 million in generative artificial intelligence litigation costs and a $9.2 million multiemployer pension plan withdrawal charge.

When: The results were released on August 5, 2026, covering the three months ended June 30, 2026, with the earnings conference call held the same day at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. Third-quarter guidance covers the period ending September 30, 2026, and the audio replay remains available until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on August 19, 2026.

Where: The company is headquartered in New York and operates print and digital products including its flagship news product, The Athletic, Audio, Cooking, Games and Wirecutter, with international distribution and a printing and distribution facility at College Point, New York. World Cup coverage during the quarter spanned 16 host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Why: The quarter demonstrates a premium news publisher expanding both advertising supply and advertising revenue at rates well above the market average, at a moment when open-web publishers are recording steep declines in search referral traffic and advertising opportunity. Digital advertising growth of 20.7 percent and digital subscription growth of 16.4 percent were delivered against a backdrop the chief executive described as an information ecosystem shaped by a small number of large technology companies whose moves continue to reduce traffic to publishers. The company's stated strategic aim is to become less reliant on those intermediaries, pursued through direct product relationships, video expansion and a first-party data position built on 12.80 million logged-in digital-only subscribers. For media buyers, the report documents expanded inventory, a new middle market sales team extending direct-sold coverage downmarket, and third-quarter guidance that steps down to mid-to-high-teens digital advertising growth as the company laps supply expansion from the second half of 2025.