This week, The New York Times is marking a major historical milestone, celebrating the 175th anniversary of its founding on September 18, 1851. To commemorate nearly two centuries of continuous reporting, the venerable publication is turning its attention not just to its own archives and Pulitzer-winning journalism, but to one of the vital institutions that has kept its presses running through eras of profound economic and social change: its advertisers.
The anniversary campaign places commercial partnerships front and center, acknowledging that the financial backing of advertisers has long been inextricably linked to the survival and independence of the publication. The centerpiece of this commemorative effort is a sweeping nine-page print spread featuring seven real advertisements pulled directly from the Times’s massive physical archives, dating all the way back to the newspaper’s inaugural year in the mid-19th century.
Beyond the print edition, the multimedia campaign extends across the publication’s modern ecosystem. It includes a dedicated landing page on the NYT Advertising homepage featuring an interactive timeline of key moments in advertising history, digital ad placements spread across various editorial verticals, and custom audio spots integrated into the publication’s popular podcast network.
This retrospective arrives at a uniquely challenging and transformative time for the broader publishing industry. Media companies across the globe are reevaluating their long-term business models as they navigate the turbulent waters of the zero-click search era, where search engines and artificial intelligence summaries often satisfy reader queries before they ever reach a publisher’s site. At the same time, traditional print advertising revenues continue their structural decline.
The economic realities facing modern publishers were underscored in the New York Times’s earnings report for the second quarter of 2026. According to the financial disclosure, print advertising revenues at the publication decreased by 11.1% compared to the same period in 2025. However, offsetting that decline to a significant degree, digital advertising revenues rose by 20.7%, highlighting the ongoing digital migration of commercial budgets.
For the Times, the 175th-anniversary campaign serves as a crucial moment to publicly recognize and celebrate the historical contributions of its commercial partners. Yet, as executives examined the archives, they uncovered a fascinating secondary narrative: far from merely paying the bills, advertising has frequently acted as a cultural barometer, often running one step ahead of major societal shifts.
“What we found was, over time, advertising actually reflected the cultural moments that we were reporting on,” says Tusar Barik, senior vice president of marketing for New York Times Advertising.
7 ads to define The Times
The inspiration for this extensive commemorative campaign struck when Barik took his marketing team on a behind-the-scenes tour of the NYT physical archives. Tucked away three floors underground in a facility adjacent to the publication’s main office, the room houses millions of pages of historical printouts, offering a tangible record of daily life over the past 175 years.
Initially, Barik envisioned a relatively straightforward project that would visually illustrate how extensively advertising formats and design aesthetics have evolved over the decades. He wanted to showcase the transition from the long, tightly packed columns of flowery, text-heavy copy in the late 1800s to the bold editorial photography of the 1960s, and finally to the dynamic digital assets, interactive formats, and video spots that define contemporary campaigns today.
However, as the team looked more closely at the individual advertisements themselves, they uncovered something far more compelling than mere design evolution. They noticed that the products, language, and imagery in these historical ads often foreshadowed broader social trends and cultural turning points, capturing the spirit of the eras in ways that mirrored the newspaper’s own breaking news coverage.
