Digital ads driving performance at The New York Times

Yesterday, The New York Times delivered its Q4 2015 results, which showed that its push into digital content paid off, as digital advertising continues to surge, pushing up growth YoY and contributing to 34.1% of the Times's total ad revenues for the quarter. The results also showed that digital revenues surpassed $197m, an 8.2% rise from 2014. As display ads continue to decline much of this growth was driven by branded content and mobile, which was up 17% and now accounts for 22% of advertising revenue. 

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

The New York Times’ digital advertising continues to surge, seeing double-digit YoY growth and comprising 34.1% of the Times’ total ad revenue in Q4 2015. Digital revenues for 2015 surpassed $197 million, an 8.2% jump from a year earlier. Much of these gains were driven by mobile and branded content. (Display continues to decline.) Mobile was up 17% in Q4 and 58% in FY 2015, and it now makes up 22% of advertising revenue. Still, the Times is figuring it out: “We’re learning quite a bit on what’s going well in mobile, on the direct sales side with our Mobile Moments product and Flex Frame product,” said Times CRO Meredith Kopit Levien. She added that the Times’ ad business centers around branded content, content services, mobile and video. “It’s about advanced storytelling,” she said. “As a result, that means bigger, more complex partnerships with marketers that often take a while to get up and off the ground.”

Kool-Aid Imbibed

“We’ve seen huge returns and quick returns,” IAC chief executive Joseph Levin told investors this week, referring to his company’s experiments with programmatic sales. Levin said on the company’s Q4 earnings call that the publisher of Dictionary.com and other properties is accelerating exchange-based ad sales. “We have seen leaps of 10%, 20%, 40%, 60% in CPMs on the programmatic stuff when we compare the right data with the right audience and do it on properties that we own and that brands appreciate.” SeekingAlpha transcript. Asked if IAC is shopping for ad tech, Levin said no.

Data Deal

Marketo sealed a data pact with WPP-owned digital and CRM agency Wunderman, coming in the wake of a similar deal between Salesforce and Omnicom Group [AdExchanger story]. The idea is to feed Wunderman’s sales and commerce data into Marketo, which can then automate ads more effectively for all Wunderman clients based on that richer consumer data set. The terms of negotiation? Marketo gets access to Wunderman’s DMP, Zipline and 890 million consumer profiles, while Wunderman gets the golden key to Marketo services. Press release.

Hand In Hand

About 130 employees from Hearst and Condé Nast will merge to form a new company, PubWorx, meant to “bring the scale of the two companies together to benefit ourselves and other publishers,” Hearst President David Carey told The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Trachtenberg. Print and distribution operations are among the shared resources, which could free up dollars to better compete with the likes of BuzzFeed. Related: Read AdExchanger’s coverage of the digital maneuvering of five legacy publishers (Hearst, Condé Nast, Rodale, Meredith and Time).

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