The New York Times will receive a $100 million payout from Google over three years as part of a content-distribution deal, providing the newspaper with a hefty revenue cushion during what will likely be a down year for the journalism industry.
While the agreement was announced earlier in the year, the monetary sum was unknown until this week, when sources revealed it to the Wall Street Journal. The deal will involve content distribution and subscriptions, as well as using Google tools for marketing and ad-product experimentation. The Times‘ revenue boost comes at a time when many media brands have been suffering ad-revenue decline.
As of January, multiple news publishers across the U.S. reduced their staffs in anticipation of advertisers cutting spending. Vox Media, the publisher of New York Magazine, Curbed and SB Nation, in January axed 7 percent of its employees, the Journal noted. Dow Jones & Co, the Journal’s parent company, as well as BuzzFeed Inc., also laid off some staff.
In April, BuzzFeed announced the closure of its news division as part of an effort to downsize its work force after years of growing financial problems. The Washington Post in December warned that layoffs affecting less than 10 percent of staff would be coming. That development came after the publication discontinued production of its Sunday print magazine.
Google’s collaboration with the Times also comes as tech giants and streaming services are trying to trim their ad spending. In challenging economic conditions, companies’ ad budgets are often the first areas of spending to be cut in response to pressure from C-level executives and company boards. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook all recently announced layoffs.
Facebook chose not to renew contracts to feature Times content in its Facebook News tab, denying the publication a large chunk of revenue. However, the most recent deal with Google more then compensates for that loss, the Journal reported. As part of the deal, the Times will participate in the Google News Showcase, a product not yet launched in the U.S. but used in other countries that offers “comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, aggregated from sources all over the world by Google News.”