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“The fact that we are no longer offering behavioral targeting options in Europe does not seem to be in the way of what advertisers want to do with us,” he said.

“The fact that we are no longer offering behavioral targeting options in Europe does not seem to be in the way of what advertisers want to do with us,” he said. “The desirability of a brand may be stronger than the targeting capabilities. We have not been impacted from a revenue standpoint, and, on the contrary, our digital advertising business continues to grow nicely.” I wonder if smaller sites could do the same thing or this is only working so well because they're the NYT?

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
The Times has a large readership and potential ad draw in the E.U. Regulations would have to be ridiculous to make it unprofitable for the Times to abandon Europe. The Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, has few European users. The fixed cost of re-tooling (or, if already in compliance, even just accepting the regulatory risk) would be difficult to justify relative to other potential investments.
- akie 8y ago
  It's either a one-time investment, or a permanent loss of a (perhaps small) part of your users. Perhaps it doesn't make sense for the LA Times, but I'm wondering how large the investment really is and whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods It's a market targeting and opportunity cost question. Yes, many of Apple's consumers are probably high-priced wine consumers. And yes, winemaking is a profitable business. That doesn't mean, however, that Apple serves its interests by expanding into wine. It's promising, though, that we now have data showing psychotic targeting practices are unnecessary. Perhaps, even inefficient.
    - sah2ed 8y ago
      > It's promising, though, that we now have data showing [psychotic] targeting practices are unnecessary. Perhaps, even inefficient. Perhaps you meant psychographic?
nopriorarrests 8y ago
It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT. They can get sweet "branding" dollars from advertisers, and with branding nobody cares about return on money spent. Smaller sites have zero chance to strike a deal with large agencies who are serving large brands. So their only chance to increase ad revenue is to offer targeting, to improve viewability (aka put banners on top), and to hope that they will get enough of retargeting dollars. EDIT: and once you think of it, people from Europe who are reading NYT is targeting option in itself. Most probably they are affluent, english-speaking, etc. If you are large luxury brand, this is all you need.
- apexalpha 8y ago
  This comment makes no sense to me. First of all: do you have any source for your first statement that "It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT" other than your gut feeling? Just because other sites are smaller doesn't mean they can't do it or work together. Smaller sites now also don't do targeted advertising; they just hire Google or any other ad network for that. They could do the same with non-targeted ads. About your edit: Yes, this is literally how advertising has always worked; you 'target' an entire audience, not an individual. Same for newspapers (on paper), TV, magazines, books, billboards in certain area's...
  - nopriorarrests 8y ago
    >do you have any source for your first statement that "It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT" other than your gut feeling? 6 year experience working in ad-tech on different projects. >Just because other sites are smaller doesn't mean they can't do it or work together. Well, try to get a slice of Procter&Gamble or Volkswagen ad budget being a small guy and not having any targeting. > they just hire Google or any other ad network for that. They could do the same with non-targeted ads. This is not how it works. If you are a small site, you set a google or any other ad network tag on your site -- right. After that, when someone visits your site, you initiate a call to these ad networks with user cookie. If this user is identified as known (say, male, 25-35 y.o., NY, was interested in Hi-Fi equipment) some advertiser may pay a lot to show an ad to this guy. 5$ CPM is not uncommon, and you may even get $10-20 from time to time. If this user is totally anonymous and there are no advertisers interested in him, good luck getting even $0.5 CPM. Most probably impression will go unmonetized. >About your edit: Yes, this is literally how advertising has always worked; you 'target' an entire audience, not an individual. nope. in case of retargeting or even modern prospecting you do target individual, just as in example above. If good portion of your audience is known to DMP's (Data Management Platform, basically tracking silos, google "Salesforce DMP" for example) and other ad-tech players, you will easily get x5 return on showing ads to them, as compared to anonymous users, all other things equal. And this is how you make money being a small publisher on the internet these days.
kijin 8y ago
If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. That's the whole point of government regulation. Everyone will be forced to run good ol' untargeted ads. Meanwhile, companies still have their advertising budgets; they'll just have to spend money on untargeted ads. It takes time to measure the relative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns, so it will take a while for the market to adjust.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  >If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. No, it doesn't. All it means is that Europe will become even less relevant in tech than we already are. Just because European companies can't do behavioral targeting doesn't mean companies outside of the EU can't do that and the EU has no jurisdiction over them, if they can even find out that this is going on in the first place. All it will mean that European tech companies get out-competed. Another thing you're not considering is that the EU has 30+ languages in it. I'm sure it will be great to see advertising in languages you can't even read. That will drive home the point that only France and Germany matter even more. >Meanwhile, companies still have their advertising budgets; they'll just have to spend money on untargeted ads. Advertising budgets don't exist in a vacuum. Their size depends on how much money they can make based on those ads. If it costs more to advertise than it brings in as sales then you just don't advertise. If targeted ads aren't a necessity then neither are online advertisements.
  - kijin 8y ago
    Contextual targeting still works. No ad agency in their right mind will run a French ad on a webpage written in German, or show an Italian ad in an app where the default language is set to Swedish. None of this requires tracking individual users across websites and apps. Besides, as other commenters have pointed out, there is no concrete evidence that targeting individual users is any better (in terms of bringing in more sales) than targeting the combination of region, language, website topic, and on-page keywords. If you're so worried about the sustainability of European ad agencies, maybe you should stop fearmongering and start trying to improve contextual targeting technology to such an extent that it provides even more value to your customers than behaviorally targeted alternatives. If and when GDPR-like regulations arrive in other parts of the world -- I'm pretty sure the noose is getting tighter in the U.S. as well -- your European agency will be in a perfect position to grab market share there.
mharroun 8y ago
It's all about the brand, ad tech firms are even willing to take losses to acquire big publishers so that they are more attractive to advertisers.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

The Times has a large readership and potential ad draw in the E.U. Regulations would have to be ridiculous to make it unprofitable for the Times to abandon Europe. The Los Angeles Times, on the other hand, has few European users. The fixed cost of re-tooling (or, if already in compliance, even just accepting the regulatory risk) would be difficult to justify relative to other potential investments.

akie 8y ago
It's either a one-time investment, or a permanent loss of a (perhaps small) part of your users. Perhaps it doesn't make sense for the LA Times, but I'm wondering how large the investment really is and whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > whether or not it would start getting worth it if you look at (say) 3 or 5 year periods It's a market targeting and opportunity cost question. Yes, many of Apple's consumers are probably high-priced wine consumers. And yes, winemaking is a profitable business. That doesn't mean, however, that Apple serves its interests by expanding into wine. It's promising, though, that we now have data showing psychotic targeting practices are unnecessary. Perhaps, even inefficient.
  - sah2ed 8y ago
    > It's promising, though, that we now have data showing [psychotic] targeting practices are unnecessary. Perhaps, even inefficient. Perhaps you meant psychographic?

nopriorarrests 8y ago

It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT. They can get sweet "branding" dollars from advertisers, and with branding nobody cares about return on money spent. Smaller sites have zero chance to strike a deal with large agencies who are serving large brands. So their only chance to increase ad revenue is to offer targeting, to improve viewability (aka put banners on top), and to hope that they will get enough of retargeting dollars. EDIT: and once you think of it, people from Europe who are reading NYT is targeting option in itself. Most probably they are affluent, english-speaking, etc. If you are large luxury brand, this is all you need.

apexalpha 8y ago
This comment makes no sense to me. First of all: do you have any source for your first statement that "It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT" other than your gut feeling? Just because other sites are smaller doesn't mean they can't do it or work together. Smaller sites now also don't do targeted advertising; they just hire Google or any other ad network for that. They could do the same with non-targeted ads. About your edit: Yes, this is literally how advertising has always worked; you 'target' an entire audience, not an individual. Same for newspapers (on paper), TV, magazines, books, billboards in certain area's...
- nopriorarrests 8y ago
  >do you have any source for your first statement that "It's absolutely working so well because they are NYT" other than your gut feeling? 6 year experience working in ad-tech on different projects. >Just because other sites are smaller doesn't mean they can't do it or work together. Well, try to get a slice of Procter&Gamble or Volkswagen ad budget being a small guy and not having any targeting. > they just hire Google or any other ad network for that. They could do the same with non-targeted ads. This is not how it works. If you are a small site, you set a google or any other ad network tag on your site -- right. After that, when someone visits your site, you initiate a call to these ad networks with user cookie. If this user is identified as known (say, male, 25-35 y.o., NY, was interested in Hi-Fi equipment) some advertiser may pay a lot to show an ad to this guy. 5$ CPM is not uncommon, and you may even get $10-20 from time to time. If this user is totally anonymous and there are no advertisers interested in him, good luck getting even $0.5 CPM. Most probably impression will go unmonetized. >About your edit: Yes, this is literally how advertising has always worked; you 'target' an entire audience, not an individual. nope. in case of retargeting or even modern prospecting you do target individual, just as in example above. If good portion of your audience is known to DMP's (Data Management Platform, basically tracking silos, google "Salesforce DMP" for example) and other ad-tech players, you will easily get x5 return on showing ads to them, as compared to anonymous users, all other things equal. And this is how you make money being a small publisher on the internet these days.

kijin 8y ago

If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. That's the whole point of government regulation. Everyone will be forced to run good ol' untargeted ads. Meanwhile, companies still have their advertising budgets; they'll just have to spend money on untargeted ads. It takes time to measure the relative effectiveness of different types of ad campaigns, so it will take a while for the market to adjust.

Mirioron 8y ago
>If nobody can legally do behavioral targeting in Europe, it levels the playing field. No, it doesn't. All it means is that Europe will become even less relevant in tech than we already are. Just because European companies can't do behavioral targeting doesn't mean companies outside of the EU can't do that and the EU has no jurisdiction over them, if they can even find out that this is going on in the first place. All it will mean that European tech companies get out-competed. Another thing you're not considering is that the EU has 30+ languages in it. I'm sure it will be great to see advertising in languages you can't even read. That will drive home the point that only France and Germany matter even more. >Meanwhile, companies still have their advertising budgets; they'll just have to spend money on untargeted ads. Advertising budgets don't exist in a vacuum. Their size depends on how much money they can make based on those ads. If it costs more to advertise than it brings in as sales then you just don't advertise. If targeted ads aren't a necessity then neither are online advertisements.
- kijin 8y ago
  Contextual targeting still works. No ad agency in their right mind will run a French ad on a webpage written in German, or show an Italian ad in an app where the default language is set to Swedish. None of this requires tracking individual users across websites and apps. Besides, as other commenters have pointed out, there is no concrete evidence that targeting individual users is any better (in terms of bringing in more sales) than targeting the combination of region, language, website topic, and on-page keywords. If you're so worried about the sustainability of European ad agencies, maybe you should stop fearmongering and start trying to improve contextual targeting technology to such an extent that it provides even more value to your customers than behaviorally targeted alternatives. If and when GDPR-like regulations arrive in other parts of the world -- I'm pretty sure the noose is getting tighter in the U.S. as well -- your European agency will be in a perfect position to grab market share there.

mharroun 8y ago

It's all about the brand, ad tech firms are even willing to take losses to acquire big publishers so that they are more attractive to advertisers.