The New York Times attracts over 40 million readers to its website every month and the company sees it as a drop in the bucket. The newspaper is planning to expand into foreign language markets with a localized edition and unique content written by reporters based in those countries.
One of the big reasons why the New York Times is expanding its digital unit outside of the US is because 30% of its internet traffic stems from outside the US. This will increase the amount of advertising revenue generated. NYT obtained $191 million via advertisements in Q1 2013 and the expansion into the Portuguese market in the next few months should bolster the bottom line.
Other markets of consideration according to Marc Frons, the senior vice president and chief information officer at The New York Times, are “Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Spanish. We don’t know the timing [for launch], these things are a little more complicated than just going abroad.”
Currently the NY Times has close to 700,000 active digital subscribers that can read as much as they want on the website every month. Non-subscribers are limited to 10 free articles, and then prompted to take out a subscription. This loyal readership accounts for 45% of the newspapers entire subscription base and should increase to 52% by 2016.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
