The Atlantic Posts First Profit in Decades

The Atlantic has been around for 153 years, and today they’ve announced that 2010 was one of the better ones. For the first time in many years, the magazine posted a profit, with advertising revenue jumping 27 percent for print and 70 percent online.

In print, The Atlantic added 38 new advertisers, including brands like Virgin Atlantic Airways and the Nissan Leaf. Digitally, things were even better for the magazine, as it added 67 new advertisers and traffic to TheAtlantic.com was up 34 percent.

Jay Lauf, Vice President and Publisher of the magazine, had this to say about the good news:

2010 was an amazing year for The Atlantic, demonstrating continued demand for explorations of ‘The American Idea’ across new platforms and channels. We look forward to building on this success with our readers and advertisers in 2011.

See? There is hope after all.

UPDATE:

We asked Lauf for a comment on what he thought was the biggest factor leading to the great year for The Atlantic, and he didn’t hesitate to point to the growth online. He explains, “There are multiple factors that have led to our profit-generating year, but the single largest would have to be our success in the digital arena.  The huge increases in digital ad revenue have made the difference in 2010 and are pointing the way forward in 2011.”

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