New York Times? mobile ads focus on targeting meaningful moments
The New York Times is launching a new advertising solution for mobile that leverages user data to serve targeted content at relevant times and places throughout the day.
The Mobile Moments solution focuses on more bringing more accurate advertising to consumers, coinciding with content and times of day that pertains more to what users have been searching. The solution will also concentrate more on visuals to better engage the user and is available on its mobile Web site and application.
"Generally speaking, mobile advertising, including banner ads and full-screen interstitials, is interruptive and undesirable," said Linda Zebian, director of corporate communications at The New York Times. "Mobile Moments is designed to be more integrated in the reader experience and more relevant to time of day.
"This new product presents bigger, better and more dynamic mobile creative, provides context for the mobile creative and tailors the mobile creative to the readers' needs," she said. "Mobile Moments is based on extensive 12-month study conducted by The Times's editorial product team that identified seven moments in a given day that are most important to readers.
"A brand can work with our award-winning, 40-person creative team in T Brand Studio to craft tailored creative to the moment of the day that will focus primarily on short-form content called screenplays. Or if a brand wishes, they may use their own creative content."
Moments in mobile
The well-known publication has been shifting many of its efforts in recent years towards mobile and through research has developed what works best through the platform. The New York Times discovered that consumers are significantly interested in moment-based content.
Content in a short, snackable format, which coincides with time periods throughout the user?s day is one of the more accurate methods of connecting to consumers. The publication has introduced much of these tactics for its editorial aspects, and is now bring these ideas to marketers.
The New York Times focuses on serving cohesive advertising via mobile
The New York Times focuses on serving cohesive advertising via mobile
The advertising solution will leverage various consumer data from The New York Times? mobile channels to bring ad content that will work best at specific moments within the day. Information regarding what readers are searching for and interested in, along with the corresponding times of day can assist marketers in developing more precise advertising.
The Mobile Moments content will be integrated with The New York Times? content and the reader?s experience. The advertisements will be targeted short stories, named Screenplays.
The new ad solution coincides with The New York Times? shift towards snackable mobile content. The publication now features a tip sheet, The Times? Morning Briefing, in which readers can get a glimpse of the day ahead, as well as a feature for the Apple Watch serving users stories within one sentence.
Targeting snackable content
The New York Times is one of many brands and publishers aware of the pull that snackable and targeted mobile content can create.
For instance, USA Today?s travel section relaunched its Business Travel hub with a mobile-optimized blog that focuses on shareable content for social media in an attempt to be the go-to source for frequent travelers (see more).
Also, Reebok International found that using a predictive targeting model for a mobile ad campaign produced measurably better results than less targeted efforts as determined by research from the Qunnipiac University School of Business (see more).
"This solution is based on findings from research conducted by Times researchers with mobile users and was inspired by The Times's success in engaging readers with moment-driven and personalized journalism," Ms. Zebian said. "Our advertising team adopted similar tools, templates and insights used by our newsroom and tailored them to suit a marketer's needs."
Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer
