5 ms·
Below is the list of feelings, which, according to the article, the NYT is now predicting with ML models trained on a proprietary dataset collected internally f
by cs702 8y ago
Below is the list of feelings, which, according to the article, the NYT is now predicting with ML models trained on a proprietary dataset collected internally from a sample of articles shown to a sample of readers. I've marked positive feelings with `(+)`, negative feelings with `(-)`, and feelings which could be viewed one way or another, depending on context, with `( )`.
Remarkably, a majority of these feelings are positive, so this advertising initiative, which has been successful at increasing per-ad revenues by as much as 80%, is creating a financial incentive for the NYT to produce content that generates positive feelings in readers!
On its face, this is shocking to me. I would have never, ever expected positive content to be more profitable than negative content! In hindsight, however, after thinking about it a bit, it kind of makes sense. I'm now wondering, could advertising perhaps become (gasp) a force for good, at least in certain settings?
NYT PREDICTED FEELINGS
Optimistic (+)
Inspired (+)
Self-Confident (+)
Amused (+)
Adventurous (+)
In the mood to spend ( )
Love (+)
Sadness (-)
Boredom ( )
Interest (+)
Fear (-)
Hate (-)
Hope (+)
Happiness (+)
Nostalgic ( )
Indulgent ( )
Competitive (+)
Informed (+)
- matt4077 8y agoIt has always been known that certain content would work better to sell ads than other. Travel, cooking, or home decoration, for example, are definitely better than political news. And yet, the NYT has withstood the pressure to become the ground level equivalent of an in-flight magazine. Can we maybe credit them for that, instead of just assuming that everybody agrees that they will succumb to economic pressure without feeling the need to even make the case for it?
- adw 8y agoThe news industry has been aware of this forever; one of the fundamental problems with news being ad-supported is that advertisers don't want their ads next to bad news. This predates the Internet; it's why glossy Sunday sections exist.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sidibe 8y agoSome advertisers prefer the negative news. AM radio has lots of ads for guns and emergency supplies.
- smadge 8y agoThe important point is that the information that gets to the public should be in the public interest, not business interests.
- shaggyfrog 8y agoSome glossy weekend sections are now entirely “sponsored content”, aka ads: https://twitter.com/canadaland/status/1116848132539678722 https://twitter.com/canadaland/status/1116848132539678722
- sib 8y agoI can see the headlines now: "Thousands killed in [less-developed country] civil war; more food left for survivors!" "Average global temperatures up 4' C in past decade; boom in tourism in Hudson Bay and Siberia!" "BigCo lays off 70,000 workers; social services employees self-worth increases!"
- drawnwren 8y agoI would add that the NYT is a very niche case. Their target audience has been educated coastal liberals for some time. It may be that this is a result of their audience and not predictive of an underlying phenomenon.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoYou're correct about the targeting, but I disagree that NYT is a niche case. NYT is a major news organization. Its a very specific one so its truths may not generalize, but I don't know if that makes it niche.
- bobthepanda 8y agoIt‘d be interesting to compare this to a variety of news sources to see how universal this is. Would you get the same result from USA Today, WSJ, WaPo, and the LA Times?
- turtlecloud 8y agoNYT has lost its prominence after esp after picking sides on several hot topic issues. The bias is way too obvious nowadays, and I personally only glance through it to see how the elite want the people to think, and then I just do the opposite lol. The favoritism towards certain groups and the dismissal of others raises a lot of eyebrows. I would say it is mainly relevant to NYC and to everyone else I would pass it in favor of a local news source. I would agree that it has become a fairly niche news source and it is quite amusing in my opinion how they are trying to hype up their ad units as they struggle with declining readership.
- coldtea 8y ago>* On its face, this is shocking to me. I would have never, ever expected positive content to be more profitable than negative content! In hindsight, however, after thinking about it a bit, it kind of makes sense. I'm now wondering, could advertising perhaps become (gasp) a force for good, at least in certain settings?* News are good when they are neither positive nor negative by design. They are good when they are relevant, useful, and informative (including them not being cherry-picked examples of stories with no impact to their readership, e.g. about some sensational murder case 10.000 miles away, and so on).
- zepearl 8y agoYou're theoretical, respectively not related to the statement posted as it's subjective.
- yorwba 8y agoThe predicted emotions are actually contained in the HTML source of each article. E.g. for an article I randomly grabbed off the front page: curl 'https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/sports/tiger-woods-wins-masters.html' | perl -n -e'/"emotions":"([^"]*)"/ && print $1' inspired,boredom,happiness,optimistic,not_interest,not_hate,not_amused,not_inthemoodtospend,not_informed,not_love,not_sadness,not_fear,not_hope
- craftyguy 8y ago> not_hope This one is a little surprising. Does the NYT think this article dashes any hopes readers might have of winning the Masters?
- ComputerGuru 8y agoIt's not hopelessness, just not hope. As in, reading this article does not elicit feelings of Hope in the reader.
- megaremote 8y agoIsn't it a huge comeback story, Wood who has not won any major in 12 years?
- mrguyorama 8y agoI would assume most people do not place themselves in Tiger Woods' shoes
- ComputerGuru 8y agoYup. In fact, I venture a lot of stories like this border on eliciting emotions of despair or reduced self-worth for a subset of the readers, something along the lines of "so and so did x/y/z and they're n years (younger|older) than me, what have I done that's worth anything in my life?"
- 8y ago
- stiglitz 8y agoFeeling good is not the point of news. The point is being informed. I cant help but think of the saying, “ignorance is bliss.”
- return0 8y agoi m willing to bet that 80% more revenue is due to the novelty factor. i believe the ad business is extremely more arbitrary than it is thought to be, and advertisers might be buying these slots because they are new and exciting, not because they are more effective.
- le205 8y agoMore revenue per page view - but its likely that negative or controversial content will get shared more and drive more overall traffic/impressions. So not sure how much of an effect this would have on the overall sentiment of content produced. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-is-there-no-good-news/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-is-there-no-go...
- netwanderer3 8y agoPeople tend to upvote a lot more than downvote. I believe it's because one's ego doesn't want to associate themselves with being negative, instead we always try to attach ourselves to more positive traits. These metrics should only be used for categorizing purpose only. We need to be very careful in using it as a driver for more of the same articles, because in the long run this will only create a feedback loop that will keep feeding us the same content and narrowing our views, making us blind to more critical issues at hand.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoManipulating people's emotions to elicit a short term positive response is not necessarily "a force for good." Journalism has historically prided itself on telling the truth. The truth is not always a feel-good experience. All good news, all the time is potentially a dystopian scenario where the truth is forbidden because it isn't profitable enough.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 8y agoThis is just their feature space. It's just what they use to distinguish between articles. It says nothing about their incentives. Also, competitive as positive? I'd see that much more as a neutral (or maybe negative).
- kgwxd 8y agoNegativity is for clicks, positivity is for renewing subscriptions.