The news: The New York Times (NYT) is seeing notable advertising momentum alongside strong financial results.

• The company’s ad unit has built its own technology stack—including tools that read content and audience signals through large language models—allowing advertisers to reach readers with high-precision contextual cues.
• Its genAI product, BrandMatch, has supported more than 150 campaigns across sectors since launching in 2024 and now extends to sponsorships and private marketplace (PMP) deals.

Zooming out: The company reported an 11.8% lift in total ad revenues for Q3 2025, with digital ads rising more than 20%. Broader results were also solid: Earnings exceeded expectations, revenues reached roughly $701 million, and digital subscriptions continued to climb, hitting 11.76 million.

The Times also locked in a major licensing win, with Amazon agreeing to pay $20 million to $25 million annually for access to its journalism, one of the largest disclosed genAI content deals to date, giving Amazon high-quality training material while reinforcing the NYT’s premium value.

Why it matters: NYT’s response to “zero-click” behavior—where users often get answers directly inside search pages—has been to double down on a fully owned ecosystem supported by first-party data and machine learning that interprets emotional cues, reading patterns, and topic affinities.

Key points shaping its advantage include:

• A diversified environment: Subscription revenues continue to rise and engagement across News, Games, Cooking, Audio, The Athletic, and Wirecutter supports both subscription growth and ad performance. The Times is also extending its momentum by adding a new Watch tab in its app designed to lift engagement and unlock fresh premium video ad inventory at a moment when publishers are under pressure to prove their value to younger audiences.
• AI-driven contextual precision: BrandMatch can map themes from advertiser briefs—such as those provided by Crown Publishing—to reader interest across NYT’s portfolio, enabling highly targeted outreach without reliance on cookies.
• Emotion-aware placements: Its “Perspective Targeting” framework uses dozens of emotional signals and motivations to place messages that fit a reader’s mindset, which MediaPost reports has contributed to elevated click and completion rates.
• Demonstrated campaign lift: Examples include Crown Publishing’s book promotions generating roughly 1% CTRs, and Belmond’s luxury travel program driving more than 17 million impressions.

What it means for publishers: NYT stands out because it owns the full chain of content, data, identity, and distribution. This lets it personalize commercial messaging while keeping user information inside its walls rather than leaning on outside intermediaries.

But there is an essential caveat: The Times is not a model most publishers can easily duplicate. Its scale, brand reputation, logged-in audience, and wide network of products give it advantages others simply do not possess. The lesson is less about copying its methods and more about recognizing that publishers with rich, authenticated engagement have clearer paths to sustainable advertising growth.