The New York Times said it added 393,000 paid digital-only subscribers during the quarter. Of this, 275,000 subscribed for its digital news product, while the remaining were for its cooking, games and audio products.
Total revenue slipped 0.4 percent to $426.9 million.
“The news cycle certainly played a role, but as we are increasingly seeing with each passing quarter, so too did the breadth of our coverage and our improving ability to mean more to more people,” Chief Executive Officer Meredith Kopit Levien said.
The media company said it expects digital-only subscription revenue to rise about 35 percent and ad sales to decline about 30 percent in the fourth quarter.
Revenue from subscription rose 12.6 percent to $300.95 million in the third quarter, while ad revenue dropped 30.2 percent to $79.25 million.
Advertising sales have been unpredictable as companies slashed ad budgets to cope with a sharp drop in business due to cronavirus-led lockdowns.
New York Times competes with tech giants like Facebook and Alphabet’s Google apart from other national news publishers to attract advertisers.
