Darcy reports: “The candor suggested that Peng is hoping for a reset in 2026. And by most accounts, she and her leadership team were quite candid on Thursday, doing little to soften the company’s plight during their presentation. Peng highlighted the newsroom’s editorial output — citing 788 scoops last year and noting that more than half of Business Insider’s stories now include exclusive or original reporting — but she was far less rosy about the company’s commercial performance, Status has learned.
At one point, Peng showed a slide showing Business Insider’s performance in several key business categories through 2025. The picture was lackluster, to say the least. The commercial showed that advertising was completely “off track” in the first quarter and remained “somewhat behind” from the second through fourth quarters. Subscriptions, long positioned as the centerpiece of Peng’s strategy to reinvent Business Insider for today’s media landscape, was only “on track” in one quarter schedules one, two and four, the company lagged behind. Meanwhile, premium syndication and partnerships performed better early in the year but fell off course in the second half of 2025.
“Over the past two quarters, we have had some issues with premium advertising,” Peng acknowledged, according to a participant in Thursday’s meeting.
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