From a story on adweek.com by Mark Stenberg headlined “Be Attracting National Budgets, Texas Monthly Grows Ad Revenue 31%”:
Publisher Texas Monthly, which marked its 50th anniversary last month, grew its overall revenue by 39% in 2022, an uptick the privately owned media company attributed to its expanded number of advertising channels and an ongoing effort to cultivate new sources of revenue.
The publisher increased its advertising revenue 31% year over year, according to chief revenue officer Jalaane Levi-Garza, and revenue from print and digital subscriptions climbed 26% in the same period.
Texas Monthly generates 75% of its revenue from advertising, 15% from subscriptions and 10% from entertainment, licensing and books.
While the publisher still generates an outsized portion of its advertising revenue from its print magazine, it has worked to mitigate the commercial challenges of its digital transformation by investing in supplemental lines of business, particularly events, audio products, derivative intellectual property and digital subscriptions.
This comes despite a broader downturn in the digital advertising ecosystem, which has prompted a wave of layoffs throughout the industry.
“Every media company is grappling with the challenge of evolving our legacies, moving from single to multi-platform,” Levi-Garza said. “We are fortunate in that the legacy of Texas Monthly print has allowed us to expand our quality editorial content across eight distinct businesses.”
The 105-person publisher has also benefited from its new ownership, the oil and gas scion Randa Duncan Williams, who acquired it for an undisclosed sum in 2019. Her patronage has let Texas Monthly invest in its digital capabilities, according to media analyst Mike Orren, the former chief product officer at The Dallas Morning News.
“They have been given the leeway to create a great product, which yields great readers, which attracts great advertisers,” Orren said. “These numbers are trailing indicators.”
Mark Stenberg is Adweek’s senior media reporter.
