The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform.
Why it matters: Third-party data, which is collected from consumers on other websites, is being phased out of the ad ecosystem because it's not considered privacy-friendly.
This has forced several big publications to rely on their own first-party data, or data that they collect directly from their users.
Beginning in July, The Times will begin to offer clients 45 new proprietary first-party audience segments to target ads.
Those segments are broken up into 6 categories: age (age ranges, generation), income (HHI, investable assets, etc.), business (level, industry, retirement, etc.), demo (gender, education, marital status, etc.) and interest (fashion, etc.)
By the second half of the year, The Times plans to introduce at least 30 more interest segments.
"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.
Murphy notes that the company has invested significantly in building out the proprietary targeting solution. "We hired a large team specifically to support this year of a dozen people. The effort has touched at least 50 people and many more in every part of company to get this to work."
