41 ms·

New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data

1237 points by jbegley 6y ago

noad 6y ago
This is a good step in the right direction, but after we break up the tech monopolies we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising. Even if all those steps were taken it might not be enough to save the internet.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  I mean, this would be enough to get me to whitelist them in my adblocker. Same goes for any other sites that do the same thing. I feel that's a strong, existing incentive.
  - chance_state 6y ago
    Probably not as strong as you think. That's some tiny fraction of people who are willing to whitelist which is another tiny fraction of people who block this stuff to begin with.
    - _bxg1 6y ago
      The people blocking ads are quite a large fraction at this point. Some smaller publications are shutting down completely because ad revenue has dried up. You may be right about how many people would bother to whitelist just because tracking has been removed, but I bet if they included that fact very prominently in their splash pop-up it would have a noticeable impact. For me, at least, I actively feel guilty reading publications without ads. I don't want journalism to die. But I simply refuse to open myself up to malware and spying for the sake of that ideal. If they want to survive, they need to take responsibility for what they're shoveling into my browser. Otherwise I'll take my basic online safety into my own hands.
  - hedora 6y ago
    If you white list them, they’re going to generate a tracking profile on you (probably tied to your name and credit card company). Presumably, they’ll directly sell this information to third parties. Even if not, they’ll indirectly share the information. Given that, how many people would actually whitelist them?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising Why do we need to ban it? I care about my privacy. I would like clear disclosures and easy opt outs. But I don't need it banned for everyone else.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    >> we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising > Why do we need to ban it? I care about my privacy. I would like clear disclosures and easy opt outs. But I don't need it banned for everyone else. Opt-outs aren't practical for the consumer and therefore don't work [1]. All that tracking/data brokering needs to be banned unless clear disclosures have been made and the consumer explicitly opts-in. [1] I know: years ago I literally spent several 8-hour days opting myself out of just one kind of data broker (scammy online people search websites). I still haven't gotten around to doing that for my wife, who is less likely to engage in quixotic quests, and sees opting out as a pointless waste of time.
    - YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
      What would you think about a law that makes easy opt-outs mandatory, with heavy fines for non-compliance?
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > What would you think about a law that makes easy opt-outs mandatory, with heavy fines for non-compliance? Better, but still not good enough. Finding and filling out 300 simple forms is still a lot of work and requires perfect vigilance. IMHO, opt-out is basically privacy theater: make it theoretically possible but practically impossible. Any opt-out system that comes anywhere close to being effective is just one default-change away from being the opt-in system that is should be.
      - troydavis 6y ago
        CCPA tried to do that by requiring a prominent "Do not sell my information" link – and still didn't succeed: https://fpf.org/2019/12/19/examining-industry-approaches-to-ccpa-do-not-sell-compliance/ https://fpf.org/2019/12/19/examining-industry-approaches-to-... A significant minority of the target audience has never heard or seen the phrase "opt out." Here's an example just how hard it is to explain what's happening and make this discoverable, let alone make it easy: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/ccpa-comments-round-two-battle-do-not-sell-button http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/ccpa-comments-roun...
- bostik 6y ago
  I feel like I must be a broken record, but here goes. Frustrated, more than four years ago, I put together a set of ground rules for online advertising I would find agreeable. It's fascinating to watch how the online ad ecosystem[ß] has evolved since then. https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/no-stalking.html https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/no-stalking.html ß: what do you call an ecosystem formed entirely of parasites?
travisporter 6y ago
Off topic but I still cannot unsubscribe from NYT online after signing up online. I have to call in during their business hours. I thought CA passed a law prohibiting this dark pattern.
- WillSlim95 6y ago
  I unsubscribe by changing to a debit card with zero balance.
  - gowld 6y ago
    Does this work, avoiding bank fees?
    - baseballdork 6y ago
      I haven't tried to cancel or anything but I pay with a card I created from privacy that has a $5 monthly limit. When the price jumps after the introductory period, it'll just decline.
      - thanksforfish 6y ago
        You just stop paying for things you use?
        baseballdork 6y ago
        No, it'll decline and alert me so I can go ahead and cancel the subscription. Then I might go subscribe to the LA Times or some other news source.
  - GhostVII 6y ago
    I think you can still be held liable for whatever they couldn't charge to your debit card if you do that. Preventing them from charging you doesn't mean you don't owe them money.
zpeti 6y ago
I would be super interested in how this actually impacts their revenue from ads. How much more does a publisher make from sharing data with 3rd parties? 30%? 50%? 100%?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  The New York Times did something similar in Europe last year, and saw revenues increase [1]. A lot of ad tech is snake oil. [1] https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut-off-ad-exchanges-europe-ad-revenue/ https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut...
- gowld 6y ago
  This is about ceasing of taking data from 3rd parties, not ceasing sending data to 3rd party aggregators. NYT will still be indirectly sending data to 3rd parties, via user-targeted ad placements.
- aggronn 6y ago
  The most common case of "Sharing data with 3rd parties" is when the first party uses their targeting platform (usually DFP/GAM) to serve a campaign to an advertiser looking for a specific audience. For example, NYT might sell a campaign targeted towards young people, and therefore would allocate inventory on their tech articles to that campaign. The advertiser or their DMP/DSP now serves content from _their first party domain_, allowing them to cookie the user. This gives them an opportunity to say "NYT said this user was in their 20s", which they can store in that cookie's profile, and later they can see that cookie when they're bidding for that user in a programmatic, non-direct setting. They can target the same user again, later, for cheaper than NYT direct pricing. Its talked about as "selling data", but its important to understand how that works, because its inherent to the value proposition of digital advertising. Its not "we have X data, do you want to buy it for $Y?". Its not about exporting CSVs or connecting data warehouses. Its "We have X data, do you want to buy inventory for that audience?". So the only way that a publisher can really sell ads without "selling data" is to do it on a non-targeted basis, so either through programmatic, non-direct, or through non-targeted direct campaigns. In isolation, a publisher who is selling non-targeted direct campaigns is not going to do well. Its just not a competitive offering to advertisers, unless the site's entire audience falls in a certain demographic--in which case, advertisers will just mark those users as having that characteristic, so in the end its still "selling data". One way to look at the value of selling first party data is to look at the gap between programmatic and direct sold inventory. Direct campaigns in the US typically go for $10-50 CPMs (highly dependent on the audience, context, and units). Programmatic averages closer to $1-2. So having first party data _and scale_ can get you a 10-20X over not having data (and scale).
jatinshah 6y ago
It’s a great decision and glad they did it. But subscription revenue is now a much bigger part of NYT’s overall revenue and ad tech CPMs are declining year over year. So it’s not a hard decision anymore.
- mc32 6y ago
  If true this may have further tack on good effects like fewer click bait headlines and fewer errors in reporting with less pressure to get things out before details emerge.
  - agentdrtran 6y ago
    These things aren't inentionally done to generate click revenue at any major outlet.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      There's hardly any other reason to do it. Blowing your credibility like this hurts subscription revenue, so the only goal must be boosting your drive-by revenue (i.e. ad impressions).
    - michaelt 6y ago
      That's a bit no-true-scotsman isn't it? People are bitching about 'clickbait headlines' on the Easyjet hack post right now - and that's an article from the BBC.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      [citation needed]
    - KoftaBob 6y ago
      Sure...
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    "Clickbait" used to mean "Ten Reasons Clickbait isn't what it used to be... Number 8 will surprise you"! Nowadays, people seem to complain about any headline that in any way has the potential to make people want to read the article. From my anecdotal experience with editors at better publications (such as the NYT), they care far less about individual articles' metrics than people seem to believe. At many of these publications, writers do not even have access to read metrics. (Bloomberg is the example I'm sure of, but there are others)
TheKarateKid 6y ago
The NYT frustrates me, as I am still forced to see 3rd party ads even after becoming a paying subscriber. There’s no option to go ad-free.
- ISL 6y ago
  This has been true since approximately the beginning of newspaper-time. How much more would you be willing to pay to go entirely ad-free? From the NYT annual report [1], it appears that they made ~$1B in subscription revenue and $0.5B in advertising revenue last year. If you're willing to pay >50% more (if you can afford more, you're probably more valuable as an advertising target), NYT is probably interested. [1] https://s1.q4cdn.com/156149269/files/doc_financials/annual/2020/Final-2019-Annual-Report.pdf https://s1.q4cdn.com/156149269/files/doc_financials/annual/2...
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    They should be self hosting ads just like print. If they were smart 20 years ago they could have become Doubleclick.
    - asdff 6y ago
      It would be unblockable too if they just had them as static images in the page. Unless you spent hours tailoring your filters and engaging in an arms race with the sysadmin, you wouldn't ever be able to win and correctly call an image an image and an ad an ad.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      When Doubleclick emerged they were essentially self hosting ads. Back then the digital vision wasn't in those media centres. They got online quickly, but they were not operating active engineering departments. Their industry was news. Advertising was a supplement, not the primary business. Hindsight is 20/20, for sure, though. I think this is a good move by NYT. I only wish the companies I've been associated with had the kind of resources to do the same. But it's expensive to even start something like that. For many companies in the space the resources are already spread thin.
Spooky23 6y ago
Makes sense. I think the promise of ad targeting doesn’t add up to value for many customers of ads. When I look at a lot of content sites, the targeted ads are pretty ridiculous and often off-brand. I live in a state capital and the ads that I see on my local newspaper are random bullshit based on my kid’s YouTube habits and a pop up auto play video for an online pharmacy. In the print edition, the ads are much smarter and more lucrative. Policy advertising for the legislative session, etc.
jrochkind1 6y ago
The NYT currently has a LOT of third party JS and cookies. Enough that I think it is noticeably impacting performance and user experience. Which hopefully was another motivation to cut it back. I mean, "privacy" should be enough, but when it's making your user experience terrible that should be enough too! (Although could lead to trying to performance optimize it instead of getting rid of it; getting rid of it is the right call).
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I can’t help but wonder if all these extensions are actually delivering the promised value. After all many media organizations got taken by FB’s lies about video out performing text, to the point where they made significant staff changes. Is it unreasonable to think they fell for something similar from the ad networks?
- Scott_Sanderson 6y ago
  Yep, I noticed the site loads much faster in Brave Browser which blocks all ads and trackers.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    Brave: A browser that blocks ads/tracking so it can integrate its own as a business model. Why do people use it? I can understand blocking ads with e.g. ublock, but I cannot understand wanting a browser that shows you desktop ads for internet points.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > Why do people use it? I can understand blocking ads with e.g. ublock, but I cannot understand wanting a browser that shows you desktop ads for internet points. Does it actually do this? When I had Brave, I never noticed that.
      - snazz 6y ago
        It’s optional. I am strongly against Brave (the privacy wording, taking cryptocurrency to be “donated” to content creators who hadn’t heard of Brave and then keeping it in “escrow” indefinitely, etc). However, if you are aware of the risks and the company’s not-stellar reputation among security people, you can use it if you want.
gerland 6y ago
It's a nice move, but probably it will even further deteriorate the situation. If NYT had to lower standards due to lack of funding, then removing cookies will only speed up the fall. It looks like a last resort attempt at trying to save themselves. How much credibility does it restore in the end?
shadowgovt 6y ago
Smart. They're a big enough institution to run that stuff in-house. True, without tracking signal on third-party sites they won't know if their readers for stories on the Florida fishing industry are also car aficionados, but I don't know that they care for their use case.
padseeker 6y ago
Building your own ad network might be a lot of work, but it means you don't have to fight with ad blockers anymore. And newspapers only have 2 avenues for revenue - subscriptions and ad revenue. You have to give some content away as promotion, but if you have an ad blocker you as a consumer of news are nothing more than a leach. It costs money to write, edit, and deliver content. Otherwise you start serving up clickbait. I used to work for the Chicago Tribune. We put in a lot of time to make our website deliver quickly. The 3rd party advert networks were the biggest drag on the site. They vary greatly in their reputation. I hope it works. Maybe they'll open source it and share it with other newspapers that deliver quality content.
safog 6y ago
How is everyone being blind to the fact that they will now simply start collecting their own user data and do targeted ads by themselves? And yes this includes potentially sensitive stuff like location data, not just NYT reading history. Adverts are not going away and they're not going subscription only, they're just going to figure out what ads to run by themselves instead of relying on 3rd parties. Imagine every single publisher does this and how many security holes that will open. Sure maybe you trust NYT to generally do the right thing with data (very debatable) but what happens when Buzzfeed does this? Do you think they'll adopt sensible data collection policies? What about the S*n? What about the data they collect? Can we guarantee that they simply won't become data brokers again? I would much rather have entrenched players like G / FB collect and take the blame for privacy misses than have every single organization build their own leaky data collection systems.
- tootie 6y ago
  They pretty much are subscription only at this point already. Secondly, just because they aren't serving third-party cookies doesn't mean they are rolling their own tracking service. You can convert a third-party cookie to first party with a DNS entry. It just prevents browsers from sharing data.
  - safog 6y ago
    Err.. but they are rolling their own tracking service + ad exchange. They say they will create user segments that advertisers can use to target ads - that is basically an ad exchange. Instead of advertisers using AdWords (or whatever they currently use to advertise on NYT), they will use a custom built NYTWords to run their ads. What I meant by subscription only is that their revenues won't be purely through subscription - ad revenue is still going to be a very significant part of their total revenues - they're not simply ditching it.
    - tootie 6y ago
      It doesn't say they are building it from scratch. It says they are offering an exchange on top of whatever data is collected. This could easily be done on top of another platform. It may not be Adobe/Google/Facebook, but this is a huge market and they'd be nuts to reinvent the wheel.
jdminhbg 6y ago
They're phasing out consumption of 3rd-party advertising data, because they're transitioning to becoming a provider of 3rd-party advertising data: > Beginning in July, The Times will begin to offer clients 45 new proprietary first-party audience segments to target ads.
- nojito 6y ago
  None of that is third party data. NYT is the party segmenting their users and allowing segments to be targeted.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    So when Google segments users and allows the NYT to target them, that's third party data, but when the NYT segments users and allows e.g. Walmart to target them, it's not?
    - nelaboras 6y ago
      It does not seem as if they will give others access to the data, rather advertisers can go directly to NYT and choose which segments to target. this seems like a more than reasonable approach - actually relevant ads, not pedsonalised ads.
    - MAGZine 6y ago
      In one case Google is retailing the ads and talking to purchasers. The content is subject to Google's review and approval. And, Google has all of the data (quite fine-grained, since that's all they do). Because there is a third party in the transaction (NYT, consumer, Google), it gets the name. In the latter case, NYT does not share its customer data with google. NYT ad dept is responsible for the editorial and aesthetic signoff of all advertisements. And, arguably, less data collection overall because advertisement is not NYT's business strength.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      First-party is when the provider of the data is also the owner of the property where that data was collected and used. Google segments used on Google properties = 1st-party. Google segments used on other sites = 3rd-party. NYT segments used on NYT = 1st-party. NYT segments can't be used anywhere else because they don't make them available nor do they want to.
buboard 6y ago
Google finally has some competition! More publishers should do this (or Nytimes may end up selling ad services to smaller publishers)
godshatter 6y ago
Here's a really naive question. The article talks about collecting data for some audience segments. Are they talking about letting users check checkboxes for the segments they might be interested in, or are they going to try to do what the third-party advertising companies do, which is try to guess what segments their users fall into by hoovering up what data they can find about them? It's crazy to me that there is a multi-billion dollar industry focused on trying to guess what ads I might be interested in, using lots of privacy-invading techniques that I do my best to counter. Did they ever think to just ask me? I might not care much about ads if it was as simple as declaring the categories I might be interested in, at least if I could be convinced that that's all I would see and that the crazy privacy violations would stop.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > Did they ever think to just ask me? I might not care much about ads if it was as simple as declaring the categories I might be interested in The most profitable ad categories are in things like insurance and legal. Who would opt in to those?
  - andrewjmg 6y ago
    got a source on that claim?
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      The adsense niches which pay the most: https://alejandrorioja.com/high-cpc-adsense-keywords/ https://alejandrorioja.com/high-cpc-adsense-keywords/ You also see it in Google keyword prices: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/most-expensive-keywords-google https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/most-expensive-keywords-g... The most profitable keywords are in industries where there is a high lifetime customer cost. Most of those are mundane because the less you think about it, the longer you stay as a customer.
      - C1sc0cat 6y ago
trts 6y ago
Baseless but I wonder if this will be a longer strategy to become a 3rd-party advertiser themselves.
dialtone 6y ago
This is just 3rd party data, not 3rd party ads... Nothing to see.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
I'm ready to see all of the third-party junk go, not just at NYT but everywhere. Also ready to get back to first party ad serving - manage it yourself, own the quality, and we will all be better off.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
First party data is a big theme for big enterprise marketing these days - as anyone who works in that area will tell you.
dirtylowprofile 6y ago
I’m a nytimes subscriber and it would be nice if they were no ads.
soumyadeb 6y ago
Is there any data to show that audience segment based advertising works better than content-based advertising? We can target an audience segment, (say men over 35) and show them same advt on all the pages I view. Or we show ads which are relevant for the content I am reading right now - if I am reading travel stories, show me travel ads. Is the concern that we won't be able to sell all the inventory doing the latter?
marban 6y ago
Regardless of how & where the NYT tracks me — what really pisses me off is that i still have to use an ad blocker as a fully paying customer to hide all those Rolex and one-more-upgrade ads.
hoten 6y ago
I wonder if this is connected to Chrome's recent announcement of blocking heavy ads. https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chro...
- shostack 6y ago
  Likely more related to several trends including the announcement about Chrome getting rid of cookies in a couple years, increased privacy legislation and risk, and desire to extricate themselves from a low-leverage relationship with big platforms like Google and Facebook. This also likely dovetails with a bet around improved UX leading to subscription growth, which is a much healthier business model for them that better aligns them with their readers. I see other publishers looking to go this route in the future if they can pull it off. Particularly privacy-focused ones that have mechanisms for aggregating 1st party data and turning it into valuable targeting segments.
- Iv 6y ago
  I wonder if GDPR played a role as well.
zwaps 6y ago
My favorite targeting so far: Cruise line adverts on a webpage talking about the coronavirus.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
The NYT knows a lot about me, certainly in the realm of what can be gathered from my reading habits. But adNauseam will continue to be running in my browser at all times. Do they know? Do they tell their advertisers?
code4tee 6y ago
In articles NYT reporters have often shamed their own site for the number of 3rd party trackers the site uses. I’m guessing a combination of that reporting, a general public shift against this sort of thing, along with serious questions about just how valuable all this tracking data really is led to this decision.
kleer001 6y ago
I hope beyond hope that someday in the future our decedents will look back on the scourge of advertisement as the cancer it was.
markosaric 6y ago
Nice move! One step at a time towards a better and healthier web for all users!
bpodgursky 6y ago
> "This can only work because we have 6 million subscribers and millions more registered users that we can identify and because we have a breadth of content," says Allison Murphy, Senior Vice President of Ad Innovation. This doesn't actually change the story that non-major media players can't compete without the targeted ad ecosystem. Even NYT only might be able to pull this off. And if it's borderline for the NYTimes, there's a 0% chance a local newspaper could survive without the CPMs from targeted ads.
mcculley 6y ago
This is a great step. Will they ever have a pure subscription product without advertisements? I really want to see a news outlet that serves subscribers.
dvduval 6y ago
I want to have a right to know how much money was paid for my clicks and views. At the very least, I should have access to all data regarding my clicks and views and have the right to ask that to be removed completely or for a date range.
- lee 6y ago
  That's kind of tricky, because wouldn't that expose business data to competitors? I'm not sure we're entitled to that right as a user. The NYT is providing us content in exchange for analytics on how we use their site or respond to their advertising. As a user we're free to not buy what they're selling.
  - dvduval 6y ago
    This is a long way from Nielsen ratings were they called viewers. If my personal activity is being tracked, by definition that is personal and I should have a right to know what personal information is being tracked. In exchange for that information I can make a decision about my viewing habits.
    - lee 6y ago
      You're right, this is a long way from Nielsen ratings. Online media is definitely not cable. What the NYT is offering is no different than what Facebook or Google is offering. You're paying with your personal information to consume their service. If you don't like the terms, then you're free to simply not use their service. I believe that's fair. Why are we entitled otherwise?
chris_wot 6y ago
It’s not just a privacy issue. Before Facebook and Google, the newspapers and publishers of the world sold their own advertising and at a reasonable price. Now that they rely on Google and Facebook, their ad revenues have collapsed. By taking back their own destiny in terms of advertising, they can make more revenue. I consider it a win-win.
donohoe 6y ago
When I worked there significant percentage of registered users were Accountants in Afghanistan earning more than 200K a year. This was due to the default values of the registration form and the tendency for people to be fatigued by the amount of non-essential information being asked at the time. I'm sure thats still there but not so much an issue given the time thats passed.
Medicalidiot 6y ago
I would sometimes read NYT articles during down time at my old job. The amount of advertising and JS on the site without and adblocker is atrocious. I ended up going to other news sites because NYT was so bad. Still, it's nowhere near as bad as WaPost.
noja 6y ago
By making it first party by proxying it?
lanewinfield 6y ago
See also: Privacy Chicken https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/privacy-chicken-game.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/priva...
manigandham 6y ago
The main reason this happened is because cookies are now useless. 3rd-party data was always rather flimsy and relied entirely on a strong identity link. With adblocking, anti-tracking, and privacy regulations changing the industry, there's not much accurate 3rd-party data left to use.
- shostack 6y ago
  They aren't yet, but they are well on their way, particularly with the upcoming Chrome cookiepocalypse. Publishers who want to fortify their businesses have a couple things they need to do right now: * Build their own data moats in the face of platforms like Facebook and Google leveraging their own * Tie audience data to logged-in users, and ensure users are constantly logged-in as much as possible. If a user is logged-in, cookies are irrelevant. * Reduce risk from privacy and data legislation. Data is now just as much (if not more so) a liability as an asset * Strengthen their direct and PMP revenue with exclusive inventory/targeting/quality * Reduce reliance on other vendors and platform data * Reduce reliance on ad revenue (more on that below) * Grow their brand to associate their inventory with the notion of "quality" and help the subscription business So what we have is a publisher with a subscription product that is checking all of these boxes. They are positioned from the brand standpoint already, clearly have a valuable audience, and the value of their 1st party data will grow over time. Buyers who want quality inventory will need to go for direct deals or PMPs, or whatever self-serve tool they may roll out at some point if they feel they are at that point. Further, if they can improve the quality or nature of ads served, they can actually drive higher revenue from fewer impressions. And at a certain point, you can conduct tests and research into whether that sufficiently improves the UX so as to drive incremental subscription revenue growth (which is likely considered more desirable) over what those extra impressions could have delivered. That improves the health of their subscription business and overall business long-term by better aligning their efforts with the interests of their paying subscribers, which is a win for them. If anyone wants to talk shop some more about this, feel free to ping me (see profile) as I've dealt with this sort of scenario in a professional capacity and could go on for days about this.
- gruez 6y ago
  >anti-tracking, and privacy regulations changing the industry What about fingerprinting? Does CCPA/GDPR cover that?
beloch 6y ago
"But changes to major web browsers to crack down on third-party data collection and new internet privacy rules are making that practice less viable." Notice that the NYT's new ad system has not been prompted by privacy-minded people who install privacy and ad-blocking plugins. NYT is concerned that coming changes to base browsers will make 3rd party tracking so ineffective for targeting ads that a homebrew solution relying on users checking off boxes that describe themselves will work better. Given the rapacious ingenuity ad hucksters have shown in the past, I suspect 3rd party data collection will find a way to keep doing it's thing and, likely, become even more invasive, at least for a little while. However, the fact that some companies are finally jumping ship is significant. I've long maintained that the ad industry's war on user privacy was ultimately self-defeating. This might be the beginning of the end.
- confounded 6y ago
  It will likely lead to centralization. If third-party cookies and device fingerprinting are blocked, then how can you track users who saw an ad twice, before deciding to buy? You can’t with much certainty, unless they’re using Chrome, and you’re Google. For the NYT who can rely on “brand” (as opposed to “performance”) advertising this isn’t a big deal. They can charge a lot just to show the image on their site. They have strong enough prestige that many advertisers will not require a third-party arbiter of tracking or impressions. But I worry that the direction of change will favor Google as an advertising behemoth, and extend their influence over the web and publishing.
  - momokoko 6y ago
    Maybe I’m older and from a different time, but conventional advertising was simply based on the topics at hand. Selling camping gear? Advertise in a camping magazine or the travel outdoors section of the newspaper. These are all completely worthwhile ways to advertise that generated results for decades. This recent change to picking a group of people as opposed to a selection of content providers is very new and many would argue this was pushed heavily by the fact that these companies like Google Facebook and others were able to wedge themselves between the content producers and the content. I’m not sure we ever truly definitively proved it was worthless to target content subject matter as opposed to personal data.
aaanotherhnfolk 6y ago
My optimistic side hopes that this is so they can do some investigative journalism into surveillance capitalism without being hypocrites.
monadic2 6y ago
Lemme know when journalists stop having two customers to please.
jokoon 6y ago
Why don't websites propose to host the ads instead? That way they can hardly be avoided (I think?), and users can't really complain about being tracked unless the websites really use something that tracks their users. I would guess advertisers really want to track users, and they want to check if websites really display those ads, but they just could check at random.
williesleg 6y ago
Who? What?
truthwhisperer 6y ago
as the New York times not one of the first adopting google AMP platform?
eggsnbacon1 6y ago
The pessimist in me says its because too many users are blocking trackers. Going first party means their tracking is unblockable
- turdnagel 6y ago
  It's because browsers are starting to block third party trackers. Safari's doing it, and Google is planning on blocking third party cookies soon.
- konschubert 6y ago
  Maybe that’s still a step forward?
  - eggsnbacon1 6y ago
    Possibly, but my fear is that ad networks will start installing frameworks on the content servers and use fingerprints instead of cookies for unique user id
- ickwabe 6y ago
  It may be able blocking ads or not. But I dont think it's about tracking. NYTimes already ran a successful test in Europe where they eliminated all third party behavioral based ads and saw no revenue drop. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/dont-be-creepy/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/dont-be-creepy/ I think they have just concluded that the story being told that sites must engage in creepy third party ad behavior is false and that they can just handle in house. Overall I think this is probably better.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    If this turns out to be as good as it sounds, I might actually renew my NYT subscription.
brosirmandude 6y ago
A lot of people saying that this decision is because of adblockers, third party scripts, and future laws but...what if they just don't need third party ads anymore? They've likely been collecting reader data for awhile and are probably at the point where they can spin up their own internal ad service. Good example piece: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-you-rich.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-yo...
- mikemotherwell 6y ago
  For a site like the NY Times, pricing the ad space based on a user's historical data is a mug's game. NY Times has a reputation and value beyond the value of a user's browser history. Why would they want to compete with small nothing sites, giving a large percentage to adtech companies, when they can sell the premium service of being associated with the NY Times? "We are the NY Times. If you want to advertise on our site you have to pay a premium." "But we want to target ..." "We are the NY Times. We have half a billion ARR. Take it or leave it." That used to be how ads worked, and I think it is a better model - for both sides in many cases.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    It also brings back the honest signal - if you’ve seen the ad on the NY Times, it must be a big deal. (Like it used to be.)
  - dntbnmpls 6y ago
    > NY Times has a reputation and value beyond the value of a user's browser history. It really doesn't. That's why they have to bully google/facebook/etc into giving them favorable/privileged treatment. > That used to be how ads worked, and I think it is a better model - for both sides in many cases. An ad model that favors something like the NY Times can't be the better model.
    - mikemotherwell 6y ago
      >An ad model that favors something like the NY Times can't be the better model. It absolutely can, let me count the ways: 1. You are never, ever on a bad site - no matter how good Google et al are, bad things happen. If avoiding that matters, NY Times is a smart move. 2. You don't pay for the AdTech - everyone know who the NY Times readers are - is spending 40%-60% to overcome the problems of mass advertising better than splitting the difference with NY Times? 3. AdFraud - NY Times can charge rates and using methods that are more fraud resistant (e.g. get rid of CPM).
brendonjohn 6y ago
This is a massive move, I read this as they are hoping to climb the value chain and are optimistic about transitioning into a company that competes for the the social media advertising dollars. After all, they own their content. Social media companies are just linking to it. I'm going to go out on a limb and say https://advertising.nytimes.com/ https://advertising.nytimes.com/ will be getting a revamp in the next eighteen months.
cs702 6y ago
Likely to be followed by The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other leading news organizations in the US, as well as elsewhere. High-quality news and editorial content is sought out mainly by smart, educated, and/or wealthy audiences. It's a very valuable, high-labor-cost, difficult-to-replicate asset. After many painful years of business failures and consolidation, this valuable asset -- high-quality news content -- along with the smart, educated, and/or wealthy audiences it attracts, have gradually become concentrated in a fairly small number of news brands with global reputations. The New York Times is one of them. As an aside, I would note that these global news brands now account for a surprisingly large proportion of front-page links submitted to HN.[a] Why would they want to split advertising revenues with third parties? They no longer need to do that. [a] e.g., see https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com
gmanley 6y ago
Edit: Posted in wrong thread.
- tschwimmer 6y ago
  I think you meant to comment on the thread about DirectX on WSL.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
oyra 6y ago
sounds encouraging. next is to abandon stalin/munzenberg/goebbels propaganda methods. way to go nyt!
cyberlurker 6y ago
I'd be willing to pay more as a subscriber (currently) if they took ads out of the website and podcasts. I've emailed them about it and got some response about how the ads allow them to provide world class journalism. Yes, but I'm willing to pay MORE.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The more you pay, the more the value of the advertisements go down since the people who have the ability to pay are the most worth advertising to. They would need to be guaranteed sufficiently many people who are willing to sufficiently enough to offset all advertising revenue. Unfortunately, time and time again, people prefer free over paying for quality.
vidoc 6y ago
I can't believe they have 6 million subscribers. People actually paying for New York Time "information". We are living crazy times!
tallgiraffe 6y ago
Privacy is an unlikely reason for them to cut ties with the 3rd party system. More likely, NYT is aiming to become the platform for other publishers. They are in a perfectly competitive business. Anyone can write, and they do. We are reading this new on Axios, after all. What NYT still has is eyeballs, and as long as they can retain a reasonable system for exchanging eyeballs for dollars, they can recruit more journalists to keey writing. Keeping their ad system in-house will also stop data-sharing with their 3rd parties, thus at least protecting their business in the short run. They are going head-to-head with Facebook.
v4dok 6y ago
Ads and news were always tied together. The problem today is that Internet + ads are tied together and that annoys everyone and diminishes revenue for newspapers. News is a public good and should be viewed as such, its a core pillar of democracy that is now getting decimated. Guess what follows next. /rant Rant no2: I was a subscriber in NYT, then one day i realized i don't read them as much and as a non-us citizen most of the content was irrelevant for me (I could find websites bashing trump everywhere for free). However, when I tried to unsubscribe their dark design technique had a step that forced me to call someone in order to cancel. I hate calling people and talking on the phone, so that was a no-go for me. Ended up changing my card to an empty one and let them kick me out because I don't pay.
- SebaSeba 6y ago
  Non-US citizen former NYT subscriber here as well. Unsubscribing was a terrible experience, they had made it unbelievably difficult for foreigners, never seen anything similar in any service. It's definetly a reason for me to not to subscribe again.
forgingahead 6y ago
So the NYTimes is building their own ad network? From Twitter[0]: "Wow. Adtech giant NYT ($800m ARR, $6B valuation) to begin selling user data directly to advertisers. Scary, anticompetitive trend led by corporate journalism - local news outlets just can't compete with closed tech platforms like this." [0]: https://twitter.com/zackkanter/status/1262755430205321224 https://twitter.com/zackkanter/status/1262755430205321224
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

1237 points by jbegley 6y ago

noad 6y ago

This is a good step in the right direction, but after we break up the tech monopolies we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising. Even if all those steps were taken it might not be enough to save the internet.

_bxg1 6y ago
I mean, this would be enough to get me to whitelist them in my adblocker. Same goes for any other sites that do the same thing. I feel that's a strong, existing incentive.
- chance_state 6y ago
  Probably not as strong as you think. That's some tiny fraction of people who are willing to whitelist which is another tiny fraction of people who block this stuff to begin with.
  - _bxg1 6y ago
    The people blocking ads are quite a large fraction at this point. Some smaller publications are shutting down completely because ad revenue has dried up. You may be right about how many people would bother to whitelist just because tracking has been removed, but I bet if they included that fact very prominently in their splash pop-up it would have a noticeable impact. For me, at least, I actively feel guilty reading publications without ads. I don't want journalism to die. But I simply refuse to open myself up to malware and spying for the sake of that ideal. If they want to survive, they need to take responsibility for what they're shoveling into my browser. Otherwise I'll take my basic online safety into my own hands.
- hedora 6y ago
  If you white list them, they’re going to generate a tracking profile on you (probably tied to your name and credit card company). Presumably, they’ll directly sell this information to third parties. Even if not, they’ll indirectly share the information. Given that, how many people would actually whitelist them?
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising Why do we need to ban it? I care about my privacy. I would like clear disclosures and easy opt outs. But I don't need it banned for everyone else.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising > Why do we need to ban it? I care about my privacy. I would like clear disclosures and easy opt outs. But I don't need it banned for everyone else. Opt-outs aren't practical for the consumer and therefore don't work [1]. All that tracking/data brokering needs to be banned unless clear disclosures have been made and the consumer explicitly opts-in. [1] I know: years ago I literally spent several 8-hour days opting myself out of just one kind of data broker (scammy online people search websites). I still haven't gotten around to doing that for my wife, who is less likely to engage in quixotic quests, and sees opting out as a pointless waste of time.
  - YetAnotherMatt 6y ago
    What would you think about a law that makes easy opt-outs mandatory, with heavy fines for non-compliance?
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > What would you think about a law that makes easy opt-outs mandatory, with heavy fines for non-compliance? Better, but still not good enough. Finding and filling out 300 simple forms is still a lot of work and requires perfect vigilance. IMHO, opt-out is basically privacy theater: make it theoretically possible but practically impossible. Any opt-out system that comes anywhere close to being effective is just one default-change away from being the opt-in system that is should be.
    - troydavis 6y ago
      CCPA tried to do that by requiring a prominent "Do not sell my information" link – and still didn't succeed: https://fpf.org/2019/12/19/examining-industry-approaches-to-ccpa-do-not-sell-compliance/ https://fpf.org/2019/12/19/examining-industry-approaches-to-... A significant minority of the target audience has never heard or seen the phrase "opt out." Here's an example just how hard it is to explain what's happening and make this discoverable, let alone make it easy: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/ccpa-comments-round-two-battle-do-not-sell-button http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/ccpa-comments-roun...
bostik 6y ago
I feel like I must be a broken record, but here goes. Frustrated, more than four years ago, I put together a set of ground rules for online advertising I would find agreeable. It's fascinating to watch how the online ad ecosystem[ß] has evolved since then. https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/no-stalking.html https://bostik.iki.fi/aivoituksia/random/no-stalking.html ß: what do you call an ecosystem formed entirely of parasites?

travisporter 6y ago

Off topic but I still cannot unsubscribe from NYT online after signing up online. I have to call in during their business hours. I thought CA passed a law prohibiting this dark pattern.

WillSlim95 6y ago
I unsubscribe by changing to a debit card with zero balance.
- gowld 6y ago
  Does this work, avoiding bank fees?
  - baseballdork 6y ago
    I haven't tried to cancel or anything but I pay with a card I created from privacy that has a $5 monthly limit. When the price jumps after the introductory period, it'll just decline.
    - thanksforfish 6y ago
      You just stop paying for things you use?
      - baseballdork 6y ago
        No, it'll decline and alert me so I can go ahead and cancel the subscription. Then I might go subscribe to the LA Times or some other news source.
- GhostVII 6y ago
  I think you can still be held liable for whatever they couldn't charge to your debit card if you do that. Preventing them from charging you doesn't mean you don't owe them money.

zpeti 6y ago

I would be super interested in how this actually impacts their revenue from ads. How much more does a publisher make from sharing data with 3rd parties? 30%? 50%? 100%?

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
The New York Times did something similar in Europe last year, and saw revenues increase [1]. A lot of ad tech is snake oil. [1] https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut-off-ad-exchanges-europe-ad-revenue/ https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut...
gowld 6y ago
This is about ceasing of taking data from 3rd parties, not ceasing sending data to 3rd party aggregators. NYT will still be indirectly sending data to 3rd parties, via user-targeted ad placements.
aggronn 6y ago
The most common case of "Sharing data with 3rd parties" is when the first party uses their targeting platform (usually DFP/GAM) to serve a campaign to an advertiser looking for a specific audience. For example, NYT might sell a campaign targeted towards young people, and therefore would allocate inventory on their tech articles to that campaign. The advertiser or their DMP/DSP now serves content from _their first party domain_, allowing them to cookie the user. This gives them an opportunity to say "NYT said this user was in their 20s", which they can store in that cookie's profile, and later they can see that cookie when they're bidding for that user in a programmatic, non-direct setting. They can target the same user again, later, for cheaper than NYT direct pricing. Its talked about as "selling data", but its important to understand how that works, because its inherent to the value proposition of digital advertising. Its not "we have X data, do you want to buy it for $Y?". Its not about exporting CSVs or connecting data warehouses. Its "We have X data, do you want to buy inventory for that audience?". So the only way that a publisher can really sell ads without "selling data" is to do it on a non-targeted basis, so either through programmatic, non-direct, or through non-targeted direct campaigns. In isolation, a publisher who is selling non-targeted direct campaigns is not going to do well. Its just not a competitive offering to advertisers, unless the site's entire audience falls in a certain demographic--in which case, advertisers will just mark those users as having that characteristic, so in the end its still "selling data". One way to look at the value of selling first party data is to look at the gap between programmatic and direct sold inventory. Direct campaigns in the US typically go for $10-50 CPMs (highly dependent on the audience, context, and units). Programmatic averages closer to $1-2. So having first party data _and scale_ can get you a 10-20X over not having data (and scale).

jatinshah 6y ago

It’s a great decision and glad they did it. But subscription revenue is now a much bigger part of NYT’s overall revenue and ad tech CPMs are declining year over year. So it’s not a hard decision anymore.

mc32 6y ago
If true this may have further tack on good effects like fewer click bait headlines and fewer errors in reporting with less pressure to get things out before details emerge.
- agentdrtran 6y ago
  These things aren't inentionally done to generate click revenue at any major outlet.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    There's hardly any other reason to do it. Blowing your credibility like this hurts subscription revenue, so the only goal must be boosting your drive-by revenue (i.e. ad impressions).
  - michaelt 6y ago
    That's a bit no-true-scotsman isn't it? People are bitching about 'clickbait headlines' on the Easyjet hack post right now - and that's an article from the BBC.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    [citation needed]
  - KoftaBob 6y ago
    Sure...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  "Clickbait" used to mean "Ten Reasons Clickbait isn't what it used to be... Number 8 will surprise you"! Nowadays, people seem to complain about any headline that in any way has the potential to make people want to read the article. From my anecdotal experience with editors at better publications (such as the NYT), they care far less about individual articles' metrics than people seem to believe. At many of these publications, writers do not even have access to read metrics. (Bloomberg is the example I'm sure of, but there are others)

TheKarateKid 6y ago

The NYT frustrates me, as I am still forced to see 3rd party ads even after becoming a paying subscriber. There’s no option to go ad-free.

ISL 6y ago
This has been true since approximately the beginning of newspaper-time. How much more would you be willing to pay to go entirely ad-free? From the NYT annual report [1], it appears that they made ~$1B in subscription revenue and $0.5B in advertising revenue last year. If you're willing to pay >50% more (if you can afford more, you're probably more valuable as an advertising target), NYT is probably interested. [1] https://s1.q4cdn.com/156149269/files/doc_financials/annual/2020/Final-2019-Annual-Report.pdf https://s1.q4cdn.com/156149269/files/doc_financials/annual/2...
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  They should be self hosting ads just like print. If they were smart 20 years ago they could have become Doubleclick.
  - asdff 6y ago
    It would be unblockable too if they just had them as static images in the page. Unless you spent hours tailoring your filters and engaging in an arms race with the sysadmin, you wouldn't ever be able to win and correctly call an image an image and an ad an ad.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    When Doubleclick emerged they were essentially self hosting ads. Back then the digital vision wasn't in those media centres. They got online quickly, but they were not operating active engineering departments. Their industry was news. Advertising was a supplement, not the primary business. Hindsight is 20/20, for sure, though. I think this is a good move by NYT. I only wish the companies I've been associated with had the kind of resources to do the same. But it's expensive to even start something like that. For many companies in the space the resources are already spread thin.

Spooky23 6y ago

Makes sense. I think the promise of ad targeting doesn’t add up to value for many customers of ads. When I look at a lot of content sites, the targeted ads are pretty ridiculous and often off-brand. I live in a state capital and the ads that I see on my local newspaper are random bullshit based on my kid’s YouTube habits and a pop up auto play video for an online pharmacy. In the print edition, the ads are much smarter and more lucrative. Policy advertising for the legislative session, etc.

jrochkind1 6y ago

The NYT currently has a LOT of third party JS and cookies. Enough that I think it is noticeably impacting performance and user experience. Which hopefully was another motivation to cut it back. I mean, "privacy" should be enough, but when it's making your user experience terrible that should be enough too! (Although could lead to trying to performance optimize it instead of getting rid of it; getting rid of it is the right call).

ashtonkem 6y ago
I can’t help but wonder if all these extensions are actually delivering the promised value. After all many media organizations got taken by FB’s lies about video out performing text, to the point where they made significant staff changes. Is it unreasonable to think they fell for something similar from the ad networks?
Scott_Sanderson 6y ago
Yep, I noticed the site loads much faster in Brave Browser which blocks all ads and trackers.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Brave: A browser that blocks ads/tracking so it can integrate its own as a business model. Why do people use it? I can understand blocking ads with e.g. ublock, but I cannot understand wanting a browser that shows you desktop ads for internet points.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > Why do people use it? I can understand blocking ads with e.g. ublock, but I cannot understand wanting a browser that shows you desktop ads for internet points. Does it actually do this? When I had Brave, I never noticed that.
    - snazz 6y ago
      It’s optional. I am strongly against Brave (the privacy wording, taking cryptocurrency to be “donated” to content creators who hadn’t heard of Brave and then keeping it in “escrow” indefinitely, etc). However, if you are aware of the risks and the company’s not-stellar reputation among security people, you can use it if you want.

gerland 6y ago

It's a nice move, but probably it will even further deteriorate the situation. If NYT had to lower standards due to lack of funding, then removing cookies will only speed up the fall. It looks like a last resort attempt at trying to save themselves. How much credibility does it restore in the end?

shadowgovt 6y ago

Smart. They're a big enough institution to run that stuff in-house. True, without tracking signal on third-party sites they won't know if their readers for stories on the Florida fishing industry are also car aficionados, but I don't know that they care for their use case.

padseeker 6y ago

Building your own ad network might be a lot of work, but it means you don't have to fight with ad blockers anymore. And newspapers only have 2 avenues for revenue - subscriptions and ad revenue. You have to give some content away as promotion, but if you have an ad blocker you as a consumer of news are nothing more than a leach. It costs money to write, edit, and deliver content. Otherwise you start serving up clickbait. I used to work for the Chicago Tribune. We put in a lot of time to make our website deliver quickly. The 3rd party advert networks were the biggest drag on the site. They vary greatly in their reputation. I hope it works. Maybe they'll open source it and share it with other newspapers that deliver quality content.

safog 6y ago

How is everyone being blind to the fact that they will now simply start collecting their own user data and do targeted ads by themselves? And yes this includes potentially sensitive stuff like location data, not just NYT reading history. Adverts are not going away and they're not going subscription only, they're just going to figure out what ads to run by themselves instead of relying on 3rd parties. Imagine every single publisher does this and how many security holes that will open. Sure maybe you trust NYT to generally do the right thing with data (very debatable) but what happens when Buzzfeed does this? Do you think they'll adopt sensible data collection policies? What about the S*n? What about the data they collect? Can we guarantee that they simply won't become data brokers again? I would much rather have entrenched players like G / FB collect and take the blame for privacy misses than have every single organization build their own leaky data collection systems.

tootie 6y ago
They pretty much are subscription only at this point already. Secondly, just because they aren't serving third-party cookies doesn't mean they are rolling their own tracking service. You can convert a third-party cookie to first party with a DNS entry. It just prevents browsers from sharing data.
- safog 6y ago
  Err.. but they are rolling their own tracking service + ad exchange. They say they will create user segments that advertisers can use to target ads - that is basically an ad exchange. Instead of advertisers using AdWords (or whatever they currently use to advertise on NYT), they will use a custom built NYTWords to run their ads. What I meant by subscription only is that their revenues won't be purely through subscription - ad revenue is still going to be a very significant part of their total revenues - they're not simply ditching it.
  - tootie 6y ago
    It doesn't say they are building it from scratch. It says they are offering an exchange on top of whatever data is collected. This could easily be done on top of another platform. It may not be Adobe/Google/Facebook, but this is a huge market and they'd be nuts to reinvent the wheel.

jdminhbg 6y ago

They're phasing out consumption of 3rd-party advertising data, because they're transitioning to becoming a provider of 3rd-party advertising data: > Beginning in July, The Times will begin to offer clients 45 new proprietary first-party audience segments to target ads.

nojito 6y ago
None of that is third party data. NYT is the party segmenting their users and allowing segments to be targeted.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  So when Google segments users and allows the NYT to target them, that's third party data, but when the NYT segments users and allows e.g. Walmart to target them, it's not?
  - nelaboras 6y ago
    It does not seem as if they will give others access to the data, rather advertisers can go directly to NYT and choose which segments to target. this seems like a more than reasonable approach - actually relevant ads, not pedsonalised ads.
  - MAGZine 6y ago
    In one case Google is retailing the ads and talking to purchasers. The content is subject to Google's review and approval. And, Google has all of the data (quite fine-grained, since that's all they do). Because there is a third party in the transaction (NYT, consumer, Google), it gets the name. In the latter case, NYT does not share its customer data with google. NYT ad dept is responsible for the editorial and aesthetic signoff of all advertisements. And, arguably, less data collection overall because advertisement is not NYT's business strength.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    First-party is when the provider of the data is also the owner of the property where that data was collected and used. Google segments used on Google properties = 1st-party. Google segments used on other sites = 3rd-party. NYT segments used on NYT = 1st-party. NYT segments can't be used anywhere else because they don't make them available nor do they want to.

buboard 6y ago

Google finally has some competition! More publishers should do this (or Nytimes may end up selling ad services to smaller publishers)

godshatter 6y ago

Here's a really naive question. The article talks about collecting data for some audience segments. Are they talking about letting users check checkboxes for the segments they might be interested in, or are they going to try to do what the third-party advertising companies do, which is try to guess what segments their users fall into by hoovering up what data they can find about them? It's crazy to me that there is a multi-billion dollar industry focused on trying to guess what ads I might be interested in, using lots of privacy-invading techniques that I do my best to counter. Did they ever think to just ask me? I might not care much about ads if it was as simple as declaring the categories I might be interested in, at least if I could be convinced that that's all I would see and that the crazy privacy violations would stop.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> Did they ever think to just ask me? I might not care much about ads if it was as simple as declaring the categories I might be interested in The most profitable ad categories are in things like insurance and legal. Who would opt in to those?
- andrewjmg 6y ago
  got a source on that claim?
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    The adsense niches which pay the most: https://alejandrorioja.com/high-cpc-adsense-keywords/ https://alejandrorioja.com/high-cpc-adsense-keywords/ You also see it in Google keyword prices: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/most-expensive-keywords-google https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/most-expensive-keywords-g... The most profitable keywords are in industries where there is a high lifetime customer cost. Most of those are mundane because the less you think about it, the longer you stay as a customer.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago

trts 6y ago

Baseless but I wonder if this will be a longer strategy to become a 3rd-party advertiser themselves.

dialtone 6y ago

This is just 3rd party data, not 3rd party ads... Nothing to see.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

I'm ready to see all of the third-party junk go, not just at NYT but everywhere. Also ready to get back to first party ad serving - manage it yourself, own the quality, and we will all be better off.

C1sc0cat 6y ago

First party data is a big theme for big enterprise marketing these days - as anyone who works in that area will tell you.

dirtylowprofile 6y ago

I’m a nytimes subscriber and it would be nice if they were no ads.

soumyadeb 6y ago

Is there any data to show that audience segment based advertising works better than content-based advertising? We can target an audience segment, (say men over 35) and show them same advt on all the pages I view. Or we show ads which are relevant for the content I am reading right now - if I am reading travel stories, show me travel ads. Is the concern that we won't be able to sell all the inventory doing the latter?

marban 6y ago

Regardless of how & where the NYT tracks me — what really pisses me off is that i still have to use an ad blocker as a fully paying customer to hide all those Rolex and one-more-upgrade ads.

hoten 6y ago

I wonder if this is connected to Chrome's recent announcement of blocking heavy ads. https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chro...

shostack 6y ago
Likely more related to several trends including the announcement about Chrome getting rid of cookies in a couple years, increased privacy legislation and risk, and desire to extricate themselves from a low-leverage relationship with big platforms like Google and Facebook. This also likely dovetails with a bet around improved UX leading to subscription growth, which is a much healthier business model for them that better aligns them with their readers. I see other publishers looking to go this route in the future if they can pull it off. Particularly privacy-focused ones that have mechanisms for aggregating 1st party data and turning it into valuable targeting segments.
Iv 6y ago
I wonder if GDPR played a role as well.

zwaps 6y ago

My favorite targeting so far: Cruise line adverts on a webpage talking about the coronavirus.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

The NYT knows a lot about me, certainly in the realm of what can be gathered from my reading habits. But adNauseam will continue to be running in my browser at all times. Do they know? Do they tell their advertisers?

code4tee 6y ago

In articles NYT reporters have often shamed their own site for the number of 3rd party trackers the site uses. I’m guessing a combination of that reporting, a general public shift against this sort of thing, along with serious questions about just how valuable all this tracking data really is led to this decision.

kleer001 6y ago

I hope beyond hope that someday in the future our decedents will look back on the scourge of advertisement as the cancer it was.

markosaric 6y ago

Nice move! One step at a time towards a better and healthier web for all users!

bpodgursky 6y ago

> "This can only work because we have 6 million subscribers and millions more registered users that we can identify and because we have a breadth of content," says Allison Murphy, Senior Vice President of Ad Innovation. This doesn't actually change the story that non-major media players can't compete without the targeted ad ecosystem. Even NYT only might be able to pull this off. And if it's borderline for the NYTimes, there's a 0% chance a local newspaper could survive without the CPMs from targeted ads.

mcculley 6y ago

This is a great step. Will they ever have a pure subscription product without advertisements? I really want to see a news outlet that serves subscribers.

dvduval 6y ago

I want to have a right to know how much money was paid for my clicks and views. At the very least, I should have access to all data regarding my clicks and views and have the right to ask that to be removed completely or for a date range.

lee 6y ago
That's kind of tricky, because wouldn't that expose business data to competitors? I'm not sure we're entitled to that right as a user. The NYT is providing us content in exchange for analytics on how we use their site or respond to their advertising. As a user we're free to not buy what they're selling.
- dvduval 6y ago
  This is a long way from Nielsen ratings were they called viewers. If my personal activity is being tracked, by definition that is personal and I should have a right to know what personal information is being tracked. In exchange for that information I can make a decision about my viewing habits.
  - lee 6y ago
    You're right, this is a long way from Nielsen ratings. Online media is definitely not cable. What the NYT is offering is no different than what Facebook or Google is offering. You're paying with your personal information to consume their service. If you don't like the terms, then you're free to simply not use their service. I believe that's fair. Why are we entitled otherwise?

chris_wot 6y ago

It’s not just a privacy issue. Before Facebook and Google, the newspapers and publishers of the world sold their own advertising and at a reasonable price. Now that they rely on Google and Facebook, their ad revenues have collapsed. By taking back their own destiny in terms of advertising, they can make more revenue. I consider it a win-win.

donohoe 6y ago

When I worked there significant percentage of registered users were Accountants in Afghanistan earning more than 200K a year. This was due to the default values of the registration form and the tendency for people to be fatigued by the amount of non-essential information being asked at the time. I'm sure thats still there but not so much an issue given the time thats passed.

Medicalidiot 6y ago

I would sometimes read NYT articles during down time at my old job. The amount of advertising and JS on the site without and adblocker is atrocious. I ended up going to other news sites because NYT was so bad. Still, it's nowhere near as bad as WaPost.

noja 6y ago

By making it first party by proxying it?

lanewinfield 6y ago

See also: Privacy Chicken https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/privacy-chicken-game.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/priva...

manigandham 6y ago

The main reason this happened is because cookies are now useless. 3rd-party data was always rather flimsy and relied entirely on a strong identity link. With adblocking, anti-tracking, and privacy regulations changing the industry, there's not much accurate 3rd-party data left to use.

shostack 6y ago
They aren't yet, but they are well on their way, particularly with the upcoming Chrome cookiepocalypse. Publishers who want to fortify their businesses have a couple things they need to do right now: * Build their own data moats in the face of platforms like Facebook and Google leveraging their own * Tie audience data to logged-in users, and ensure users are constantly logged-in as much as possible. If a user is logged-in, cookies are irrelevant. * Reduce risk from privacy and data legislation. Data is now just as much (if not more so) a liability as an asset * Strengthen their direct and PMP revenue with exclusive inventory/targeting/quality * Reduce reliance on other vendors and platform data * Reduce reliance on ad revenue (more on that below) * Grow their brand to associate their inventory with the notion of "quality" and help the subscription business So what we have is a publisher with a subscription product that is checking all of these boxes. They are positioned from the brand standpoint already, clearly have a valuable audience, and the value of their 1st party data will grow over time. Buyers who want quality inventory will need to go for direct deals or PMPs, or whatever self-serve tool they may roll out at some point if they feel they are at that point. Further, if they can improve the quality or nature of ads served, they can actually drive higher revenue from fewer impressions. And at a certain point, you can conduct tests and research into whether that sufficiently improves the UX so as to drive incremental subscription revenue growth (which is likely considered more desirable) over what those extra impressions could have delivered. That improves the health of their subscription business and overall business long-term by better aligning their efforts with the interests of their paying subscribers, which is a win for them. If anyone wants to talk shop some more about this, feel free to ping me (see profile) as I've dealt with this sort of scenario in a professional capacity and could go on for days about this.
gruez 6y ago
>anti-tracking, and privacy regulations changing the industry What about fingerprinting? Does CCPA/GDPR cover that?

beloch 6y ago

"But changes to major web browsers to crack down on third-party data collection and new internet privacy rules are making that practice less viable." Notice that the NYT's new ad system has not been prompted by privacy-minded people who install privacy and ad-blocking plugins. NYT is concerned that coming changes to base browsers will make 3rd party tracking so ineffective for targeting ads that a homebrew solution relying on users checking off boxes that describe themselves will work better. Given the rapacious ingenuity ad hucksters have shown in the past, I suspect 3rd party data collection will find a way to keep doing it's thing and, likely, become even more invasive, at least for a little while. However, the fact that some companies are finally jumping ship is significant. I've long maintained that the ad industry's war on user privacy was ultimately self-defeating. This might be the beginning of the end.

confounded 6y ago
It will likely lead to centralization. If third-party cookies and device fingerprinting are blocked, then how can you track users who saw an ad twice, before deciding to buy? You can’t with much certainty, unless they’re using Chrome, and you’re Google. For the NYT who can rely on “brand” (as opposed to “performance”) advertising this isn’t a big deal. They can charge a lot just to show the image on their site. They have strong enough prestige that many advertisers will not require a third-party arbiter of tracking or impressions. But I worry that the direction of change will favor Google as an advertising behemoth, and extend their influence over the web and publishing.
- momokoko 6y ago
  Maybe I’m older and from a different time, but conventional advertising was simply based on the topics at hand. Selling camping gear? Advertise in a camping magazine or the travel outdoors section of the newspaper. These are all completely worthwhile ways to advertise that generated results for decades. This recent change to picking a group of people as opposed to a selection of content providers is very new and many would argue this was pushed heavily by the fact that these companies like Google Facebook and others were able to wedge themselves between the content producers and the content. I’m not sure we ever truly definitively proved it was worthless to target content subject matter as opposed to personal data.

aaanotherhnfolk 6y ago

My optimistic side hopes that this is so they can do some investigative journalism into surveillance capitalism without being hypocrites.

monadic2 6y ago

Lemme know when journalists stop having two customers to please.

jokoon 6y ago

Why don't websites propose to host the ads instead? That way they can hardly be avoided (I think?), and users can't really complain about being tracked unless the websites really use something that tracks their users. I would guess advertisers really want to track users, and they want to check if websites really display those ads, but they just could check at random.

williesleg 6y ago

Who? What?

truthwhisperer 6y ago

as the New York times not one of the first adopting google AMP platform?

eggsnbacon1 6y ago

The pessimist in me says its because too many users are blocking trackers. Going first party means their tracking is unblockable

turdnagel 6y ago
It's because browsers are starting to block third party trackers. Safari's doing it, and Google is planning on blocking third party cookies soon.
konschubert 6y ago
Maybe that’s still a step forward?
- eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  Possibly, but my fear is that ad networks will start installing frameworks on the content servers and use fingerprints instead of cookies for unique user id
ickwabe 6y ago
It may be able blocking ads or not. But I dont think it's about tracking. NYTimes already ran a successful test in Europe where they eliminated all third party behavioral based ads and saw no revenue drop. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/dont-be-creepy/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/dont-be-creepy/ I think they have just concluded that the story being told that sites must engage in creepy third party ad behavior is false and that they can just handle in house. Overall I think this is probably better.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  If this turns out to be as good as it sounds, I might actually renew my NYT subscription.

brosirmandude 6y ago

A lot of people saying that this decision is because of adblockers, third party scripts, and future laws but...what if they just don't need third party ads anymore? They've likely been collecting reader data for awhile and are probably at the point where they can spin up their own internal ad service. Good example piece: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-you-rich.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-yo...

mikemotherwell 6y ago
For a site like the NY Times, pricing the ad space based on a user's historical data is a mug's game. NY Times has a reputation and value beyond the value of a user's browser history. Why would they want to compete with small nothing sites, giving a large percentage to adtech companies, when they can sell the premium service of being associated with the NY Times? "We are the NY Times. If you want to advertise on our site you have to pay a premium." "But we want to target ..." "We are the NY Times. We have half a billion ARR. Take it or leave it." That used to be how ads worked, and I think it is a better model - for both sides in many cases.
- jacobush 6y ago
  It also brings back the honest signal - if you’ve seen the ad on the NY Times, it must be a big deal. (Like it used to be.)
- dntbnmpls 6y ago
  > NY Times has a reputation and value beyond the value of a user's browser history. It really doesn't. That's why they have to bully google/facebook/etc into giving them favorable/privileged treatment. > That used to be how ads worked, and I think it is a better model - for both sides in many cases. An ad model that favors something like the NY Times can't be the better model.
  - mikemotherwell 6y ago
    >An ad model that favors something like the NY Times can't be the better model. It absolutely can, let me count the ways: 1. You are never, ever on a bad site - no matter how good Google et al are, bad things happen. If avoiding that matters, NY Times is a smart move. 2. You don't pay for the AdTech - everyone know who the NY Times readers are - is spending 40%-60% to overcome the problems of mass advertising better than splitting the difference with NY Times? 3. AdFraud - NY Times can charge rates and using methods that are more fraud resistant (e.g. get rid of CPM).

brendonjohn 6y ago

This is a massive move, I read this as they are hoping to climb the value chain and are optimistic about transitioning into a company that competes for the the social media advertising dollars. After all, they own their content. Social media companies are just linking to it. I'm going to go out on a limb and say https://advertising.nytimes.com/ https://advertising.nytimes.com/ will be getting a revamp in the next eighteen months.

cs702 6y ago

Likely to be followed by The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other leading news organizations in the US, as well as elsewhere. High-quality news and editorial content is sought out mainly by smart, educated, and/or wealthy audiences. It's a very valuable, high-labor-cost, difficult-to-replicate asset. After many painful years of business failures and consolidation, this valuable asset -- high-quality news content -- along with the smart, educated, and/or wealthy audiences it attracts, have gradually become concentrated in a fairly small number of news brands with global reputations. The New York Times is one of them. As an aside, I would note that these global news brands now account for a surprisingly large proportion of front-page links submitted to HN.[a] Why would they want to split advertising revenues with third parties? They no longer need to do that. [a] e.g., see https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

gmanley 6y ago

Edit: Posted in wrong thread.

tschwimmer 6y ago
I think you meant to comment on the thread about DirectX on WSL.
deleted 6y ago
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oyra 6y ago

sounds encouraging. next is to abandon stalin/munzenberg/goebbels propaganda methods. way to go nyt!

cyberlurker 6y ago

I'd be willing to pay more as a subscriber (currently) if they took ads out of the website and podcasts. I've emailed them about it and got some response about how the ads allow them to provide world class journalism. Yes, but I'm willing to pay MORE.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
The more you pay, the more the value of the advertisements go down since the people who have the ability to pay are the most worth advertising to. They would need to be guaranteed sufficiently many people who are willing to sufficiently enough to offset all advertising revenue. Unfortunately, time and time again, people prefer free over paying for quality.

vidoc 6y ago

I can't believe they have 6 million subscribers. People actually paying for New York Time "information". We are living crazy times!

tallgiraffe 6y ago

Privacy is an unlikely reason for them to cut ties with the 3rd party system. More likely, NYT is aiming to become the platform for other publishers. They are in a perfectly competitive business. Anyone can write, and they do. We are reading this new on Axios, after all. What NYT still has is eyeballs, and as long as they can retain a reasonable system for exchanging eyeballs for dollars, they can recruit more journalists to keey writing. Keeping their ad system in-house will also stop data-sharing with their 3rd parties, thus at least protecting their business in the short run. They are going head-to-head with Facebook.

v4dok 6y ago

Ads and news were always tied together. The problem today is that Internet + ads are tied together and that annoys everyone and diminishes revenue for newspapers. News is a public good and should be viewed as such, its a core pillar of democracy that is now getting decimated. Guess what follows next. /rant Rant no2: I was a subscriber in NYT, then one day i realized i don't read them as much and as a non-us citizen most of the content was irrelevant for me (I could find websites bashing trump everywhere for free). However, when I tried to unsubscribe their dark design technique had a step that forced me to call someone in order to cancel. I hate calling people and talking on the phone, so that was a no-go for me. Ended up changing my card to an empty one and let them kick me out because I don't pay.

SebaSeba 6y ago
Non-US citizen former NYT subscriber here as well. Unsubscribing was a terrible experience, they had made it unbelievably difficult for foreigners, never seen anything similar in any service. It's definetly a reason for me to not to subscribe again.

forgingahead 6y ago

So the NYTimes is building their own ad network? From Twitter[0]: "Wow. Adtech giant NYT ($800m ARR, $6B valuation) to begin selling user data directly to advertisers. Scary, anticompetitive trend led by corporate journalism - local news outlets just can't compete with closed tech platforms like this." [0]: https://twitter.com/zackkanter/status/1262755430205321224 https://twitter.com/zackkanter/status/1262755430205321224

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