Report: NY Times Co. expecting 30% Growth

The New York Times Company is predicting 30% growth in its online revenue efforts this year, and much of that growth is said to be organic rather than through acquisitions of other entities.

by Kristina Knight

CEO Janet Robinson spoke at the Bear Stearns Media conference Tuesday. A transcript or webcast of the gathering is available here. "We expect digital revenues will grow approximately 30% to about $350 million," she said. Robinson went on to say that the NYT Company would focus their efforts on "attracting more users, deepening their engagement and then monetizing our readers' usage," to grow incremental traffic and revenue.

The forecasted growth is substantial, but would actually indicate a slowdown for the company. In 2006, the New York Times Company showed 41% growth. The company saw even larger growth between 2005 and 2006.

Still, the company is already showing some growth in the new year, which is a good sign. January saw 8% revenue growth and received 43 million unique visitors to its parent company website, making it the 11th most visited site. Another online effort that is showing improvement is the company's recent purchase of About.com which, "attracts more women than iVillage, more teens than MTV.com and more men than ESPN.com," said Robinson.

Robinson went on to say that the About.com purchase will continue to help in overall growth throughout 2007. "It excels at optimizing content for search. By increasing the exposure of our content through search, we are attracting additional users."