Is the NYT's web site worth billions?
If you assume "average revenue per user" is the right way to measure value, and the valuation on the Huffington Post is even in the general ballpark, then that's what you get:
About 35% of the HuffPo’s users come form Google. They land on cleverly optimized content: stories borrowed from other (and consenting) medias that mostly generate blogging and comments. This is the machine that drove 28m unique visitors in January, which makes the HuffPo close to the New York Times/Herald Tribune audience of 30m UV. With one key difference: each viewer of the NYT websites yields an ARPU of $11, ten times more than the Arianna thing. Based on the HuffPo’s valuation, the NYT Digital would be worth billions.
By
Ezra Klein
| February 15, 2011; 9:29 AM ET
Categories:
Journalism
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Anybody still think Time Warner was worth what AOL paid for it? LOL
AOL paid 5 times forward earnings for HP in a business where 2 times forward earnings is the standard. This from a company that doesn't make a profit, to a company that supposedly made a profit in 2010 for the first time. Notice Huffington herself thought so much of the deal that she took nearly all of the offer in cash (and probably had her car outside with the motor running the whole time).
Nobody knows what the NYT is worth until they try their subscription model (again) sometime soon.
Posted by: johnmarshall5446 | February 15, 2011 9:58 AM | Report abuse
"Medias"?
Posted by: thehersch | February 15, 2011 9:59 AM | Report abuse
--*Is the NYT's web site worth billions?*--
Is the Washington Post worth anything?
The people working it don't seem particularly committed to reporting the news, whatever the news may be.
"Like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the Washington Post is still dead to the Project Gunwalker Scandal."
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-just-in-washington-post-is-still.html
Posted by: msoja | February 15, 2011 1:41 PM | Report abuse
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