The New York Times used to crow about the performance of its About unit, which it bought for $410 million in 2005. Not so much anymore. PaidContent has the news that About is reorganizing its operations. Business Insider claimed it is laying off its editorial team, which is apparently not the case. NYT brought in executive Martin Niesenholtz to run About, which is now regularly tagged as “troubled,” replacing Cella Irvine. The downfall of About was speeded by Google’s Panda algorithm update that hit so-called content farms hard. It’s hard to see a future where the NYT is able to turn around About, considering it is a legacy business built on search optimization at a time when Google is hellbent of fighting the spam that clogs its results.
More in Media
NewFronts Briefing: Samsung, Condé Nast, Roku focus presentations on new ad formats and category-specific inventory
Day two of IAB’s NewFronts featured presentations from Samsung, Condé Nast and Roku, highlighting new partnerships, ad formats and inventory, as well as new AI capabilities.
The Athletic to raise ad prices as it paces to hit 3 million newsletter subscribers
The New York Times’ sports site The Athletic is about to hit 3 million total newsletter subscribers. It plans to raise ad prices as as a result of this nearly 20% year over year increase.
NewFronts Briefing: Google, Vizio and news publishers pitch marketers with new ad offerings and range of content categories
Day one of the 2024 IAB NewFronts featured presentations from Google and Vizio, as well as a spotlight on news publishers.
Ad position: web_bfu