The New York Times Company today reported digital advertising revenue of $109.9 million for the third quarter of 2026, up 12.0% from $98.1 million a year earlier but short of the mid-to-high-teens growth the company had guided to in August. Subscriptions carried the quarter: the company added about 420,000 net digital-only subscribers, taking its total to 13.76 million, and digital-only subscription revenue rose 14.6% to $421.3 million. Operating profit climbed 16.4% to $121.9 million.

In Short

The New York Times Company, which sells news, games, recipes and sports coverage online, said today that advertisers spent 12% more on its websites and apps between July and September 2026 than a year earlier, which was less growth than the company itself had predicted in August. Subscriptions kept growing, with about 420,000 more people paying for digital access, and profit rose, so the shortfall sits in one part of the business rather than across it. The company expects digital ad growth to slow again in the last three months of the year, when it will be measured against its strongest quarter of 2025.

The quarter in numbers

The results were published on November 4, 2026, ahead of an earnings call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time with Meredith Kopit Levien, president and chief executive, and Will Bardeen, executive vice president and chief financial officer. All comparisons are with the third quarter of 2025 unless stated otherwise.

Total revenues rose 9.7% to $768.5 million from $700.8 million, according to the earnings release. Subscription revenue reached $547.5 million, up 10.7%. Advertising brought in $142.6 million, up 7.8%. The third line, affiliate, licensing and other revenues, rose 6.2% to $78.4 million.

Costs grew more slowly than sales. Total operating costs increased 8.5% to $646.6 million, and adjusted operating costs, which strip out depreciation, amortization, severance, multiemployer pension withdrawal costs and special items, rose 8.7% to $618.9 million. Operating profit rose to $121.9 million from $104.8 million, lifting the operating margin to 15.9% from 15.0%. Adjusted operating profit, the measure management leans on most heavily, grew 13.9% to $149.6 million, a margin of 19.5% against 18.7% a year earlier.

Net income came to $97.4 million, up 19.2% from $81.6 million. Diluted earnings per share were $0.60, ten cents higher than a year earlier, and adjusted diluted earnings per share were $0.68 against $0.59. The effective tax rate edged up to 25.0% from 24.4%.

"Q3 was another quarter of strong execution and sustained momentum across The Times," Kopit Levien said in the release. "Our results highlighted the enduring advantages of our strategy and our multi-revenue stream model."

Against the company's own guidance

The presentation published alongside the release sets each line against the outlook the company gave in August. Four of the six measures landed inside their ranges and one finished above. Digital advertising was the exception.

Measure Q3 2026 guidance Q3 2026 actual
Digital-only subscription revenues increase 12 - 15% +14.6%
Total subscription revenues increase 9 - 11% +10.7%
Digital advertising revenues increase mid-to-high-teens +12.0%
Total advertising revenues increase high-single-to-low-double-digits +7.8%
Affiliate, licensing and other revenues increase low-to-mid-single-digits +6.2%
Adjusted operating costs increase 8 - 9% +8.7%

Bardeen described the digital advertising result plainly on the call. "Digital advertising revenues increased 12 percent to $110 million, driven by marketer demand and growth in advertising supply," he said, according to the prepared remarks. "This was slightly below the guidance range." Total advertising, at 7.8%, he placed "within our guidance range," which puts it at the very bottom of a band that runs from high single digits to low double digits. Affiliate, licensing and other revenues finished "slightly above our guidance range," in his words.

The pattern reverses the previous quarter. In August, the Times reported second-quarter digital advertising revenue up 20.7% to $114.0 million, ahead of the high-teens growth it had guided to, while adjusted operating costs overshot their range. In the third quarter, costs landed inside the range and advertising fell short.

Digital advertising loses pace

The deceleration is visible in the company's own five-quarter table. Digital advertising grew 20.3% in the third quarter of 2025, 24.9% in the fourth, 31.6% in the first quarter of 2026 and 20.7% in the second. At 12.0%, the third quarter of 2026 is the slowest growth in that series.

Sequential figures make the same point from a different angle. Digital advertising revenue fell to $109.9 million in the third quarter from $114.0 million in the second, a drop of about $4.1 million. A year earlier, the movement ran the other way: second-quarter 2025 digital advertising revenue was $94.4 million, and the third quarter of 2025 came in at $98.1 million. On PPC Land's calculation, that is a sequential decline of roughly 3.6% this year against a rise of about 3.9% last year.

The company gave two reasons for the growth it did achieve: "continued marketer demand and growth in advertising supply." None of the three documents quantifies the additional supply or says where it came from - whether from video, apps, Games, The Athletic or elsewhere. None mentions pricing, CPMs or programmatic share. Kopit Levien's prepared remarks did not dwell on the shortfall. "Digital advertising again delivered double-digit growth at 12%, and total advertising grew as well," she said. "We were pleased with these results and are confident in the long-term trajectory of our ad business, which is buoyed by a clear strategy, strong marketer demand for our products, and high engagement."

Print advertising continued its decline, falling 4.3% to $32.7 million from $34.2 million. That is a gentler fall than the 11.1% drop reported for the second quarter. Over nine months, digital advertising totaled $317.1 million, up 20.4%, while print advertising fell 8.6% to $101.5 million.

Digital now accounts for 77% of the Times' advertising revenue, by PPC Land's calculation, up from 74% a year earlier. Advertising as a whole made up 18.6% of total revenues in the quarter, slightly below the 18.9% of the third quarter of 2025.

What the fourth quarter has to beat

The guidance for the final quarter of the year is lower again. Digital advertising revenues are expected to "increase high-single-to-low-double-digits" against the fourth quarter of 2025, and total advertising revenues to "increase mid-single-digits." The comparison is demanding: digital advertising reached $147.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 24.9%, the largest quarterly figure in the five-quarter table.

The company does not translate the ranges into dollars. Reading "high-single-to-low-double-digits" as 7% to 12%, digital advertising would land between roughly $157.5 million and $164.9 million in the fourth quarter, by PPC Land's calculation. The top of that range would roughly match the third quarter's 12%; everything below it means slower growth.

For the rest of the business, the Times expects digital-only subscription revenues to rise 12% to 15%, total subscription revenues 9% to 11%, affiliate, licensing and other revenues by low single digits to mid single digits, and adjusted operating costs by 6% to 8%. Applied to the fourth quarter of 2025, the digital subscription range points to between about $427 million and $439 million, and the cost range to between about $647 million and $659 million, again by PPC Land's calculation.

Subscriptions: 420,000 net additions, ARPU almost flat

The subscriber line looked healthier. The company ended September with approximately 13.76 million subscribers across print and digital, of whom approximately 13.22 million were digital-only. Net digital-only additions of about 420,000 compared with 280,000 in the second quarter of 2026, 310,000 in the first quarter, 450,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 460,000 in the third quarter of 2025. Over twelve months, the digital-only base grew by about 1.46 million.

Print subscribers, who receive digital access with home delivery, slipped to 540,000 from 570,000 a year earlier. Print subscription revenues fell 0.7% to $126.3 million, which the company attributed mainly to lower single-copy revenues.

Average digital-only subscribers rose 13.1% year over year, "driven by multiple products across the portfolio as well as strong retention," Bardeen said. The documents do not include a churn rate, so the retention claim cannot be checked against a figure.

Average revenue per user moved little. Digital-only ARPU was $9.93, up 1.4% from $9.79 but a cent below the $9.94 of the second quarter. Year-over-year ARPU growth has swung across the past five quarters: 3.6% in the third quarter of 2025, 0.7% in the fourth, 2.4% in the first quarter of 2026, 3.1% in the second and now 1.4%. According to the release, the increase was "driven primarily by subscribers transitioning from promotional to higher prices and price increases on certain tenured subscribers."

"We continued to be pleased by performance at our pricing step-up points, and we believe this reflects that our subscribers appreciate the significant value we're adding to our products," Bardeen said.

The two drivers multiply neatly. A 13.1% rise in average subscribers combined with a 1.4% rise in ARPU produces growth of about 14.7%, by PPC Land's calculation, close to the 14.6% reported for digital-only subscription revenue. The growth, in other words, came almost entirely from volume rather than price.

How the Times counts a subscriber

The supplemental tables explain what sits inside the 13.22 million. A subscriber is a user who has subscribed, with a valid payment method, to one or more of the company's products: the news product, The Athletic, Audio, Cooking, Games or Wirecutter, either in the bundle or standalone. Group corporate and education subscriptions are included, with the number of group subscribers "derived using the value of the relevant contract and a discounted subscription rate." Each family subscription "is counted as one billed subscriber and one additional subscriber to reflect the additional entitlements in these subscriptions." The release does not say how many subscribers fall into the group or family categories.

ARPU is calculated by dividing digital-only subscription revenue in the quarter by the average number of digital-only subscribers, using the weighted average of each month's daily average, then dividing by the number of days in the quarter and multiplying by 28 to reflect a 28-day billing cycle.

Over a longer horizon, the presentation shows the scale of the build. Digital-only subscribers rose from 8.59 million in the third quarter of 2022 to 9.41 million, 10.47 million, 11.76 million and 13.22 million in each subsequent third quarter. Third-quarter digital-only subscription revenue rose from $244 million to $282 million, $322 million, $367 million and $421 million. Across the four years, subscribers grew about 54% and revenue about 73%, on PPC Land's calculation.

Kopit Levien put the next target in round numbers. "We added 420,000 net new digital subscribers, bringing our total subscriber base to 13.8 million and keeping us on track to our next milestone of 15 million, and beyond," she said. The gap from 13.76 million to 15 million is about 1.24 million subscribers. The company gave no date for reaching the milestone in the documents released today.

Wirecutter and licensing

Affiliate, licensing and other revenues rose to $78.4 million from $73.9 million, "primarily as a result of higher licensing and higher Wirecutter affiliate referral revenues, which more than offset a shift in the timing of a marketing promotion by one of our partners," according to the release. The partner and the promotion are not named.

The line is broad. It includes licensing, Wirecutter referrals, commercial printing, the leasing of floors in the company's headquarters, live events and retail commerce. The digital portion, which consists primarily of Wirecutter affiliate revenue and digital licensing, totaled $54.4 million in the quarter and $149.7 million over nine months. On PPC Land's calculation, digital sources made up about 69% of the line in the third quarter.

None of the three documents names a licensee or breaks out AI-related licensing income. The Times has disclosed a licensing agreement with Amazon for AI-related uses, and Kopit Levien set out the tests the company applies to such deals in an August interview, when she also said the Times had sued three AI companies. The company has disclosed little about the deal's value, and today's documents add nothing to it.

Among the forward-looking risk factors listed in the release is "our dependence on third-party platforms for attracting, retaining and monetizing a significant portion of our users and for our ability to maintain and grow our licensing revenues." The sentence links licensing revenue to the same third-party platforms the company relies on for its audience.

Where the money went

Cost growth, according to the release, came "largely as a result of higher compensation and benefits expenses, primarily relating to our journalism, higher general and administrative costs, as well as higher marketing and promotion costs."

Cost of revenue, which excludes depreciation and amortization, rose 7.0% to $373.5 million on higher journalism compensation, higher digital content delivery costs and higher subscriber servicing costs. Sales and marketing rose 12.5% to $89.5 million, driven by marketing and promotion and higher advertising compensation. Over nine months, sales and marketing spending was up 17.5% to $252.3 million, the fastest growth among the four main operating cost categories.

Product development grew 7.9% to $72.3 million, reflecting higher compensation and technology-related expenses. General and administrative costs rose 12.7% to $86.4 million, which the release attributes to professional services and "one-time promotional expenses related to the 175th anniversary of the Company, partially offset by lower compensation and benefits expenses." On an adjusted basis, excluding severance and multiemployer pension withdrawal costs, general and administrative costs rose 13.3% to $83.6 million.

Video absorbs investment

Bardeen named video as the clearest destination for new spending. Cost growth, he said, "was driven primarily by compensation and benefits expenses associated with investments in our journalism and digital products, including our video initiatives." Looking to the fourth quarter, he added: "As we've discussed, video in particular remains an important area of strategic investment being reflected in our results and in our guidance."

Kopit Levien listed the formats. Long-form shows including The Interview, The Ezra Klein Show and Popcast are, she said, "increasingly important venues for newsmakers who know they'll be watched by big, influential audiences." The company added short-form video series, with new dispatches from the hosts of The Daily and fashion critic Vanessa Friedman. The Athletic began the second season of its weekly NFL show on Amazon. The DealBook franchise reaches 25 years later in November, with an interview lineup that, according to Kopit Levien, includes J.D. Vance, Zohran Mamdani, Christine Lagarde, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Hailey Bieber.

What video earns is not disclosed. None of the documents separates video advertising revenue or gives video audience figures. In August, Kopit Levien said video was playing a relatively minor role in advertising growth so far. The third-quarter remarks do not update that assessment.

Product work beyond video included a dedicated midterm elections section in the flagship app, with data visualization, polling and spending analysis, and a weekly drop of subscriber-only puzzles in Games, the bonus puzzle program the Times outlined in September. Cooking launched "a new AI-powered tool" that helps home cooks adapt the company's recipes, which Kopit Levien described as "human-crafted." Wirecutter introduced its first "Hall of Fame" of long-standing product picks.

The cost of suing AI companies

One special item sits between operating profit and adjusted operating profit: litigation costs tied to "certain lawsuits alleging unlawful and unauthorized copying and use of the Company's journalism and other content in connection with the development of generative artificial intelligence products." The Times calls these Generative AI Litigation Costs and has reported them separately since the first quarter of 2024.

They came to $3.8 million in the third quarter, up 57.0% from $2.4 million a year earlier, or $2.8 million after tax, equal to $0.02 a share. Over nine months, the costs totaled $12.6 million against $10.3 million in the same period of 2025. Management's reasoning for excluding them, according to the release, is that "unlike other litigation expenses, the Generative AI Litigation Costs arise from discrete, complex and unusual proceedings and do not, in management's view, reflect the Company's ongoing business operational performance." Other litigation expenses are not excluded.

The documents do not list the cases. The Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft remains pending in federal court in New York, and on November 1 PPC Land reported that OpenAI had published excerpts from 20 briefs filed against the paper's position. On November 2, after the quarter had closed, the Times sued Brave over AI answers and ad blocking alongside three other newspapers. Costs from those suits fall outside the third-quarter figures.

The nine-month accounts also carry a $9.2 million charge, recorded in the second quarter, for the company's withdrawal from a multiemployer pension plan. A year earlier, a $3.5 million impairment of a non-marketable equity investment had reduced third-quarter interest income. Interest income and other, net, rose to $11.6 million from $7.9 million.

Cash, buybacks and the 175th year

The Times generated $435.8 million of free cash flow in the first nine months of 2026, up from $392.9 million, on operating cash flow of $462.2 million and capital expenditures of $26.4 million. The 2025 figure included about $33 million of net proceeds from the lease and sale of roughly four acres of excess land at the College Point, N.Y., printing plant, finalized in February 2025.

On a trailing twelve-month basis, free cash flow was $593.4 million at September 30, against $623.0 million at June 30 and $536.5 million a year earlier. Taxes play a part in the comparison. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act lowered the company's cash tax payments by $65 million in 2025, and the company expects a reduction of about $60 million in 2026. It "does not expect the majority of this cash flow benefit to recur beyond fiscal 2026," according to the release.

Cash and marketable securities stood at $1.26 billion at September 30, up $96.9 million since the end of 2025. The company has no outstanding debt and has not drawn on its $400 million unsecured revolving credit line.

Share repurchases accelerated. During the quarter the Times bought back 1,158,652 Class A shares for about $79.1 million, an average of roughly $68.27 a share by PPC Land's calculation. As of October 30, about $146.0 million remained authorized. Bardeen said the company's "capital allocation framework includes a process that enables us to accelerate share repurchases when we believe there are attractive return opportunities, and we saw that in Q3."

Year to date, the company has returned about $276 million to shareholders, approximately $171 million in buybacks and $105 million in dividends. That equals about 63% of free cash flow for the period, by PPC Land's calculation, above the commitment to return "at least 50 percent of free cash flow to our shareholders over the mid-term." The quarterly dividend was $0.23 a share, up from $0.18. Diluted shares outstanding fell 1.3% to an average of 162.3 million.

For the full year, the company expects depreciation and amortization of about $85 million, including $25 million to $30 million of acquired intangible asset amortization, interest income and other of $45 million to $50 million, and capital expenditures of $35 million to $40 million. Third-quarter capital spending was about $4 million, half the $8 million of a year earlier.

Less traffic, and a platform warning

The most pointed passage in the prepared remarks came at the end of Kopit Levien's section. The company, she said, delivered its 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. The Times isn't immune to that impact."

She did not name the companies or say how much traffic the Times has lost, and none of the documents contains a traffic figure. Her answer to the pressure was the subscription model: "our essential subscription strategy - which is about human-made journalism and product experiences that people seek out directly and make room for in their lives - provides powerful advantages that we believe will only deepen with time." The same sentence appears in her statement in the earnings release.

Industry data PPC Land has tracked over the past year describes the pressure she referred to. Chartbeat's quarterly figures showed search falling to 12% of North American publisher pageviews in the third quarter of 2026, down from 21% a year earlier. A NewzDash analysis of more than 400 publishers found the Web Search share of Google traffic to news sites roughly halved between 2023 and the fourth quarter of 2025, as Google Discover took a larger share. And on October 29, Digital Content Next, whose members include the Times, asked the court in the OpenAI case to accept a brief stating that members' unique visitors fell 26% between 2023 and 2025, with advertising making up 84% of participating members' 2025 digital revenue. The spread of zero-click search, in which answers appear on the results page itself, is one of the explanations publishers have offered for such declines.

The Times' revenue mix looks very different. Taking digital subscription revenue, digital advertising and the digital share of affiliate and licensing revenue together, digital advertising accounted for about 19% of the company's digital revenue in the third quarter, by PPC Land's calculation. That structure helps explain how a quarter of slower advertising growth still produced higher margins.

Why the quarter matters for advertisers and publishers

For advertisers, the Times' advertising operation has spent the past year adding inventory and data products. In February, Magnite's DV+ became the preferred platform for private marketplace deals on the Times' mobile apps, with the app audience said to have doubled over two years. In June, PPC Land reported that NYT Advertising's first clean room campaign beat cookie-based targeting on click-through rate in international markets. The Athletic's podcasts have been sold exclusively through Acast since April 2025. The third-quarter release mentions "growth in advertising supply" but none of those programs by name.

For other publishers, the comparison is with a sector in which advertising has been shrinking. In August, News Corp reported that advertising had fallen to 15% of its revenue, and Ziff Davis recorded a $54.8 million write-down on health media as advertising revenue fell 6%. Against those figures, a 12% gain in digital advertising stands out, even though it missed the company's own forecast.

The fourth quarter will show how far the slowdown runs. The company's own guidance allows for digital advertising growth no faster than the third quarter's, against a $147.2 million comparison, while subscription revenue is guided to keep growing in double digits. The documents released today do not give a date for the full-year results.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), led by president and chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien and chief financial officer Will Bardeen, along with the advertisers, subscribers and partners behind its news, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic products.

What: Third-quarter 2026 revenue rose 9.7% to $768.5 million. Digital advertising grew 12.0% to $109.9 million, below the company's mid-to-high-teens guidance and the slowest growth in five quarters, while total advertising rose 7.8% to $142.6 million. The company added about 420,000 net digital-only subscribers to reach 13.22 million digital-only and 13.76 million in total, with digital-only ARPU up 1.4% to $9.93. Adjusted operating profit rose 13.9% to $149.6 million, free cash flow reached $435.8 million over nine months, and the company bought back $79.1 million of stock in the quarter. Fourth-quarter guidance calls for digital advertising growth of high single digits to low double digits.

When: The quarter ran from July 1 to September 30, 2026. Results were released today, November 4, 2026, with an earnings call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Where: The company is based in New York, and its results cover subscribers and advertisers worldwide. The documents do not break revenue down by geography.

Why: The quarter shows a large news publisher whose digital advertising growth has slowed sharply from the start of the year, against what Kopit Levien described as moves by "a small number of big tech companies" that "continue to result in less traffic to publishers." Subscription growth, which accounts for most of the company's digital revenue, offset the slowdown, and the fourth-quarter guidance indicates the company expects digital advertising growth to be no faster than in the third quarter.