Figures

Sourced, dated numbers from Pew, Nielsen and the Reuters Institute — advertising share, circulation decline, streaming growth.

Folded newspapers stacked on a wooden counter beside a green flyer — 2014 — $16.4 billion (−66% from 2000 peak, in nominal terms)Photo: Mathias Reding / Pexels

Every number on this site is attributed to the body that published it and carries the year it was taken. Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media puts total US newspaper advertising revenue at $48.7 billion in 2000 and $16.4 billion in 2014. Nielsen’s Total Audience Reports track pay-television households from a 2012 peak of roughly 105 million to below 75 million in 2020.

The platform share is the third series. Pew first tracked Google and Facebook’s combined hold on US digital advertising in 2012, at about 35 per cent; by the 2018 edition the figure was about 58 per cent, leaving the remainder divided among thousands of publishers.

A hand points to a horizontal bar chart displayed on a tablet held over a desk — Pew Research Center's State of the News Media reports document total newspaper advertising revenue falling from $48.7 billion in 2000 to $16.4 billion in 2014 in nominal terms — a 66 percent decline in fourteen years.Photo: Jakub Zerdzicki / Pexels

Divisions of this section

Advertising

Pew’s revenue series and the Google–Facebook share.

Audience

Nielsen on pay television, time-shifting and streaming.

Platform economics

What Patreon and Substack keep from a subscription.

Every piece in Figures

The other sections

Last EditionsThe print closure record — named papers, dated final editions, the economics behind each one.The Living RoomTelevision's turn — from Nielsen-rated broadcast to streaming, cord-cutting and the writers who stopped the machine.Kept GoingThe independent and nonprofit outlets that existed before the shift and kept publishing through it.Everything, in one listAll thirty pieces, grouped by section.