• Paid Content, Thursday, September 27, 2012 3:18 PM

New York magazine's banner year and all-round financial success is due at least in part to its aggressive digital strategy, with digital properties accounting for "40% of the company's total ad sales, unlike competing consumer pubs that "draw only about 5% to 15% of their ad sales from their digital operations," writes Matthew Flamm in Ad Age.

"The publication is pouring these new revenues back into reporting and has created a virtuous cycle in which high-quality journalism attracts high-quality ads," writes Jeff John Roberts, taking Flamm's analysis a step further to ask if other city mags can do likewise. Perhaps not, he concludes, noting that "New York invested early enough to turn the digital corner before print revenues started their dramatic decline; it may be too late for others to do the same."

Commenters on the site also provide some good reasons why New York "may be an outlier and not a model for other city magazines," as Roberts writes. For one, there's more national interest in what's happening in New York than in most other places, according to one comment: "It might be a touch harder for a city mag from Adelaide to attract that kind of online traction."

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