Our fourth quarter results also underscore the power and benefit of having diverse sources of revenue even beyond subscriptions and advertising, as we enjoyed a record quarter for affiliate revenue to Wirecutter, driven by a highly successful holiday shopping season. But most of it happened this quarter. It publishes the Wall Street Journal, and owns market data companies and websites and the Investors Business Daily.
Others see it as an honest mistake made in the midst of a chaotic event (which would make it misinformation, rather than disinformation). To that end, our focus continues to be on building engagement for The Athletic as part of The Times bundled, significantly widening its audience funnel by further opening up its hard paywall and increasing overall awareness for The Athletic journalism. We are intensely focused on subscriber engagement across the portfolio. And we signed a multiyear commercial agreement with Google at the end of the year, which stretches across many facets of our business, including content distribution, marketing and product experimentation. Is like new better than very good. That was largely an audio business. 81% of quotes were from Biden administration officials and other Democrats, and 19 percent were from Republicans.
First, we are especially focused on growing audience share and widening our pools of high-quality prospects in news and across our expanded product portfolio and bundles, which we expect will drive subscriber growth over time. And I think we've been very conscientious about those investments, particularly in the current macroeconomic environment, but the number is growing modestly. This is largely consistent with the 105% funded status we reported at year-end 2021, a strong result in light of the general market performance in 2022. It's slightly larger than all of New England combined NYT Crossword. Altogether, digital advertising amounted to around one-sixth of its $US667. We're proud of our results, which reflect the differential value of our expanded product portfolio, the multi-revenue stream nature of our model, strong unit economics and disciplined cost management. Our qualified pension plans ended the year 106% funded with an approximate $70 million surplus. You might expect to see a little bit of that in cancellations from the economy, and we did not see that.
We're reporting $348 million in adjusted operating profit for the year, an increase of $13 million versus last year. They have a lot of podcasts, which are great. Its slightly larger than all of New England combined Crossword Clue Nytimes. And we believe that doubling that minimum percentage of free cash flow that we aim to return illustrates the real confidence in the business and the desire for us to return capital to shareholders. 49% of quotes were provided by public officials such as members of the Biden Administration, US Department of Education officials, members of Congress, governors, and state attorneys general. You can imagine, we're good at that at the Times, and we're kind of bringing all that to The Athletic. Do slightly better than net.com. 5% in the quarter, with digital-only subscription revenue growing nearly 23% to approximately $252 million. And I'll point to two things that certainly change. We look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
The earnings release published this morning reports revenues on both a GAAP and estimated 13-week basis. Given the uncertain macroeconomic environment, we continue to look closely at costs while strategically investing in areas that widen our moat, like journalism and digital product development. I think I think the moves we made and announced last February showed a bit of a shift in our philosophy, which we think was a positive step to be able to return capital to shareholders. And the 180, 000 was sequentially similar. The stronger US dollar saw News' December quarter revenue fall 7% to $US2. Our third quarter results support our confidence in our strategy, and reinforce our conviction in the long-term opportunity for The New York Times Company. At The New York Times Group, we grew adjusted operating profit by 14% and drove more than 100 basis point improvement in margin.
We recorded just over 1 million net digital subscriber additions for the year, our second best year ever for net adds behind only our blockbuster 2020. A 2005 study by UCLA found The New York Times news section has a left-wing bias. In the meantime, we're working closely together to position us well for the arrival of our next CFO, a search for whom is well underway. All participants will be in listen-only mode. For the final quarter the company said Operating profit fell to $US93. You should listen to them. The headwinds that we envisioned when we shared our mid-term AOP target have materialized, largely as we expected. We'll begin to see the financial benefit from this deal starting in 2023. As a matter of fact, it was tick better than we had seen recently. The way you're reporting it now, looks like it's just under 2.
If so, the cuts will be easy peasy. This represents a change in practice in the last 3 quarterly calls in which I provided guidance to The New York Times Group only. I don't have a lot more to say about it today. Learn how we rate media bias. And so, what we're adding here is a premium display business, like the business we have on The Times with great ad canvases, and you can imagine all the things we've done with The Times including building a rich trove of first-party data and building partnerships with marketers that want to do something kind of more meaningful than just run display. The New York Times initially said that Sicknick was "struck by a fire extinguisher, " citing two unnamed law enforcement officials. I'll turn now to our third-quarter subscriber results. As Meredith said, our third quarter results, combined with our fourth quarter outlook, suggest we expect to post a strong full year 2022 result, even as we face macroeconomic headwinds. 17a Its northwest of 1. But Roland may have more to say about the kind of specifics on reporting.