
New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data - jbegley
https://www.axios.com/new-york-times-advertising-792b3cd6-4bdb-47c3-9817-36601211a79d.html
======
jrochkind1
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).

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Idling on the New York Times's homepage without an adblocker in Firefox,
Activity Monitor says the tab is using ~10% of one core of my cpu, and
About:Performance says it's using ~200 MB of memory.

Now, I have a pretty fast CPU—a 4790K—and it wasn't that long ago that most
computers had less than 200 MB of RAM total. And, you could read on those
computers just fine.

On the other hand, if I repeat the same test with my Slack tab, I get 30% of
CPU and 400 MB of RAM. Slack doesn't have ads, and IM clients are another
thing that worked just fine 20 years ago.

I guess my point is, the web is bloated, and I'm not sure why we're harping on
The Times.

~~~
all_blue_chucks
A six year old CPU can still be described as "pretty fast?" Moore's Law really
must be dead and buried.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
I think it's more a function of modern OS's not really taking that much more
from the CPU than they used to be- IIRC, Windows 10 is _faster_ than Windows 7
on slow hardware because it disables more nice-to-have features (think Aero).

CPUs continue to get more powerful, but the minimum hardware requirements for
newer editions of operating systems tends to not follow the same curve that
new game releases do. (I can't play Rainbow 6 Siege on my Ryzen 5 3550H + GTX
1050 laptop, but CSGO runs fine on it and my i7-2670QM laptop mobo with a GTX
1060 strapped to it.)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> IIRC, Windows 10 is faster than Windows 7 on slow hardware.

This has not been my experience with Windows 7 ==> 10.

~~~
karatestomp
10 (and IIRC 8?) felt _incredibly_ slow on my gaming PC until I switched to an
SSD for the OS disk. I think it hits disk way, way more often than 7, which
makes it feel slower. Even on an SSD it doesn't really seem any better than 7
did on spinning rust (programs load faster, of course, but you can't really
credit the OS for that—the OS interface itself, and OS utilities, don't seem
faster). This was true even with Cortana and all that junk totally disabled.

------
beloch
"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
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
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.

~~~
tomComb
Sure, they were done, but not nearly as effective - hence all the effort to
gather data for targeted ads.

If you want completely integrated ads you'll need about twice as many to get
the same revenue. And I'm not even sure what's so terrible about targeted ads
in the first place (leaving aside how the data is handled which varies
enormously).

------
jatinshah
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
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.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
"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)

~~~
nightfly
Headlines used to include the most important information, and the text for a
link for the article would be the headline or something similarly descriptive.
Nowadays links to articles often explicitly exclude information forcing you to
the article to even see what it's about.

------
godshatter
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.

~~~
eitland
> Did they ever think to just ask me?

In Google settings I can choose my interests.

Of course Google knows better than me and would always completely disregard
it, showing me ads for dating sites (most seemed unusually scammy) for 10
years after I married instead of showing ads for stuff I might need or be
tempted to buy anyway:

\- car parts (unless I have recently bought everything I need like today)

\- computer/tech conferences

\- family holidays, toys etc

Since Google only hires the best and brightest and let them work freely under
the most inspiring conditions this must be a really great idea.

For those who don't catch it: this is soaked in sarcasm.

Edits: a bunch.

Let me also add that while Google ads often has great ROI[0 ] you should keep
an eye on them. Google has _annoyed me_ for ten years but I'm close to
claiming they must have _scammed_ a bunch of dating sites (or maybe just one
company with a lot of fronts?)

[0]: although possibly less than before according to friends who used them to
bootstrap a nice company.

~~~
Jestar342
The last thread on HN regarding "smart" advertising (that I participated in)
had a brilliant reply to my following anecdote:

> I buy (electronic) gadgets all the time. Parts for PCs, Raspberry Pis,
> Arduino, "smart" devices to replace "dumb" devices like light bulbs, power
> sockets, equipment for race/flight simulation, etc. and adverts were usually
> just for the latest nVidia card or some games or something. Then there was
> that ONE TIME I bought a unicorn dress for my (then 2yo) daughter and that's
> it: Nothing but unicorn shit advertised at me for the rest of my life.

and the reply was something like:

> The fact that FAANG has spent what must be billions on specialised/targetted
> advertising and still can never show us adverts for anything other than
> stuff _we've already bought_ reassures me that we'll not see intelligent
> targetted advertising in my lifetime.

and I have to say I agree.

~~~
MagnumPIG
Part of this inaccuracy is on purpose.

People can really freak the fuck out when you can predict what they need
accurately. For example the real case of a store advertising specific baby
items to someone who didn't know she was pregnant.

This is why "suggested items" often have one wildcard thrown in: They don't
want you to realize just how much they really know you.

Of course this doesn't explain failures, but I wouldn't rule out smart ads
just yet.

~~~
dchichkov
Hmm. Maybe this story was simply marketing of "perfect" advertisement
services? Or an outlier?

~~~
JAlexoid
I would have thought that HN readers would at least be somewhat tech savvy,
but alas.

Advertisement systems are way less advanced and much more stereotype driven,
than privacy freaks care to acknowledge. Think of this - advertisers have less
than 100ms to decide the best ad to show you... often multiple times per
website. Do you really think that any ads are actually personalised?

I remember having to differentiate between Bike Helmet for Barbie(a toy) and
Barbie Bike Helmet(safety device for children)... Or the fact that if you let
a learning algo run through the categories, they can place dildos(adult toys)
right next to water guns(kids toys).

There are services that target you with offers that are highly tailored*, but
online ads are not one of those services.

(Amazon's "You May also like", food delivery services suggestions, and similar
things that can calculate for a long time)

~~~
andrepd
?? 100ms? Why, is precomputing outlawed or anything and I didn't hear it? And
"privacy freaks", really? I thought after Snowden the notion that only crazies
care about privacy no longer flies as it did.

~~~
JAlexoid
I'm not interested in educating you of all the constraints that each display
ad tech company has to operate with. Suffice to say - no one is calculating or
storing a list of "perfect ads" for you, nor does anyone particularly care
that you like tentacle porn. You're really not that valuable.

Yes. Privacy freaks are overreacting on how deep ad tech cares to know about
you. It's way less than what NSA or spying agencies(hello Facebook) are able
to collect and use.

------
TheKarateKid
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
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/2...](https://s1.q4cdn.com/156149269/files/doc_financials/annual/2020/Final-2019-Annual-
Report.pdf)

~~~
blakesterz
There was a real cost to printing single newspaper to me. I've no idea what it
was, or is now, but it's about a million times more than the cost of me
reading every new story on the NY Times website today. Maybe not a million
times, but it's certainly much higher.

So while I do agree newspapers have always been ads with some news thrown in
there to get people to look at the paper, there were some much higher costs
there in the paper part of the newspaper (and printers and delivery people and
so on). In theory the cost of how I read "the paper" now should be much lower,
so if I pay to subscribe to the website maybe there shouldn't be ANY ads? Or
far fewer?

I guess my thinking is nytimes.com isn't the same thing as The NY Times I get
delivered to my house, so maybe things like ads should be treated in a
different way? Sure the people that make it and reporters and news and all
that are the same, but how I consume the actual thing is significantly
different and has a different cost model.

Plus those print ads were/are WAY different in so many ways.

~~~
windthrown
It still costs a lot of money to send reporters all over the world and do
lengthy investigative journalism, regardless of if it is delivered to you in
print or digital format. And NYT does charge more for physical paper delivery
than they do for online-only subscriptions.

------
brosirmandude
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-
yo...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-you-
rich.html)

~~~
mikemotherwell
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.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> 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
>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).

------
cs702
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)

------
eggsnbacon1
The pessimist in me says its because too many users are blocking trackers.
Going first party means their tracking is unblockable

~~~
ickwabe
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
If this turns out to be as good as it sounds, I might actually renew my NYT
subscription.

------
travisporter
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.

~~~
Kique
I don't think this is true, on my account (also signed up online) I can go to
the below link and click "Cancel Subscription" then choose the Use Account
option instead of calling in or using their customer service chat.

[https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/subscription](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/seg/subscription)

~~~
yonig
I just did the chat option and it put me in a queue to wait for an "Account
specialist" that is estimated to take 25 minutes. Other two options were phone
call or text. I actually did intend to cancel today so ill see this through.

edit: chat took 30 minutes from start to cancel. mostly dead air. when the
chat starts they also asked for a phone number (which i never gave, so it
wasnt for ID confirmation) but i instead just entered 'NA'

------
manigandham
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.

~~~
gruez
>anti-tracking, and privacy regulations changing the industry

What about fingerprinting? Does CCPA/GDPR cover that?

~~~
Nextgrid
GDPR, at least does. Of course, GDPR is useless because nobody cares to
enforce it. But if one day it gets enforced then fingerprinting is definitely
not compliant.

------
jdminhbg
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
None of that is third party data.

NYT is the party segmenting their users and allowing segments to be targeted.

~~~
jdminhbg
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?

~~~
manigandham
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.

------
v4dok
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
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.

------
hoten
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-
chro...](https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html)

~~~
shostack
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.

------
noad
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.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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
>> 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
What would you think about a law that makes easy opt-outs mandatory, with
heavy fines for non-compliance?

~~~
troydavis
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-...](https://fpf.org/2019/12/19/examining-industry-
approaches-to-ccpa-do-not-sell-compliance/)

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-
roun...](http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/02/ccpa-comments-round-two-
battle-do-not-sell-button)

------
forgingahead
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)

------
Spooky23
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.

------
zpeti
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%?

~~~
aggronn
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).

~~~
shostack
Found the industry person.

Fully agree with this. Data leakage is also a real thing in RTB given the
nature of the bid response if a pub wants any sort of decent CPMs/fill.

Bringing this all 1st party and essentially creating their own walled data
garden boosts the value of the exclusive 1st party data for some presumably
valuable audience segments, arms their direct and PMP sales efforts with even
more exclusivity, and prepares them for the post-cookie world once the Chrome
update hits, which only really works for publishers that can get high %'s of
logged-in users to match to audience segments and build their models around.

This also handily lets them reduce/eliminate privacy legislation risk since
presumably subscribers need to consent to all of this collection and usage for
the service (nuances of how "ok" that is in the eyes of the various privacy
bodies not withstanding).

------
donohoe
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.

------
code4tee
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.

------
annoyingnoob
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.

------
jokoon
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.

------
padseeker
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.

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

------
dvduval
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
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
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
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?

------
tallgiraffe
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.

------
bpodgursky
> "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.

------
marban
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.

------
brendonjohn
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.

------
soumyadeb
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?

------
C1sc0cat
First party data is a big theme for big enterprise marketing these days - as
anyone who works in that area will tell you.

------
chris_wot
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.

------
cyberlurker
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
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.

------
lanewinfield
See also: Privacy Chicken

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/priva...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/privacy-
chicken-game.html)

------
safog
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
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
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
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.

------
Medicalidiot
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.

------
PaulDavisThe1st
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?

------
mcculley
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.

------
kleer001
I hope beyond hope that someday in the future our decedents will look back on
the scourge of advertisement as the cancer it was.

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

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

------
shadowgovt
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.

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

------
monadic2
Lemme know when journalists stop having two customers to please.

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

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

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

------
noja
By making it first party by proxying it?

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

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

------
gmanley
Edit: Posted in wrong thread.

~~~
tschwimmer
I think you meant to comment on the thread about DirectX on WSL.

------
gerland
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?

