That comment about advertising being risky while they move out of a recession is a strange one. Outside of a recession advertising rates will increase hugely; what they should be scared of is the next recession and preparing for it.
If Condé Nast thinks that they're going to be getting 50% of their revenue from consumer subscriptions, then they'd better start increasing the quality of some of their offerings. Wired comes to mind in particular with its terrible content-to-ad ratios both in print and electronic forms and its legion of short also-ran articles. I know when the option of renewing my $12/year subscription to Wired came up a couple of years ago, I just couldn't find the value to justify the admittedly-marginal cost.
You need a certain ad-to-content ratio to qualify for bulk mail postage rates.
On the internet, too?
While perhaps just a coincidence, this is very interesting considering the recent news re: Reddit Gold.
They want to charge people more to read a magazine that is 90% ad pages. That could work.