In graphic detail: What trends we can see from publishers 2021 earnings report

By Kayleigh Barber

The pandemic’s first year turned the publishing industry on its head, forcing executives to not only halt certain businesses, but to look for new revenue opportunities in an attempt to mitigate some of the impact.

In the second year, however, publishers seemed to have a better grasp on our new reality and saw some businesses come back online, working in conjunction with the primary businesses that kept their companies afloat — and in some cases growing.

While private publishers have revealed their cards from time to time with announcements of wins and reported setbacks, publicly traded publishers like The New York Times, Gannett, The Arena Group, IAC, News Corp., and now BuzzFeed, provide more of a glimpse into how specific revenue streams are bouncing back as well as audience behaviors around how they are consuming news.

Below are some insights we’ve gathered from six public publishers’ most recent earnings reports, most of which for the full year 2021 (News Corp’s Dow Jones/WSJ reports on its fiscal year, which runs July 1 – June 30).

Nearly all publishers in the above chart saw year-over-year growth from 2020 to 2021, which isn’t overly surprising given the pandemic’s hit to the economy and the advertising industry in the second and third quarters of 2020. Gannett, however earned about $200 million less this past year compared to 2020, though this only about a 6% decrease year over year.

On average, publishers saw a 20% change in their annual revenue between 2020 and 2021. While many of the publishers can equally celebrate in that growth, the breakdown in where that new revenue came from varies.

Where BuzzFeed and Gannett have advertising contributing over 50% of their annual revenue, the Times only earned a quarter of its revenue last year from ads. Meanwhile, IAC’s Dotdash Meredith and The Arena Group only delineated between print and digital in their reports, however, IAC added print revenue from the recent acquisition of Meredith Corp at the end of 2021.

Dotdash Meredith’s revenue breakdown changed the most drastically, thanks to its M&A dealings. In 2021, digital revenue consisted of display advertising, performance marketing and licensing, while print revenue is comprised of subscription, newsstand, print advertising and performance marketing revenue, according to its 2021 annual SEC filing. In 2020, Dotdash’s revenue was broken down by display advertising, performance marketing and affiliate commerce commission revenue, which totaled $214 million.

BuzzFeed is one of the only publishers willing to break out its commerce revenue and not classify it as “other” in its reports. And what we can tell from their 2021 commerce business is how significantly publishers were impacted by supply chain issues in the fourth quarter, though BuzzFeed claims that the 26% decline year over year in the fourth quarter was not exclusively because of the shipping delays and inventory issues.

Instead, the company’s CFO Felicia DellaFortuna attributed a portion of this drop off to “the world reopen[ing],” resulting …read more

Source:: Digiday