The New York Times

Success Story

Raising readership with relevancy

The newspaper used Facebook’s targeting and data insights to deliver more personally relevant content to consumers and increase subscriptions.
  • 25% reduction in cost per subscription
  • 45% increase in Facebook ad investment
  • 2.3X increase in volume of subscription conversions

Their Story

A publishing icon

The New York Times Company is a global media organization dedicated to enhancing society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news and information.

Their Goal

From readers to subscribers

The New York Times wanted to build even stronger relationships with readers and increase subscriptions by understanding how people consume New York Times content, and by engaging occasional Times readers with interesting and tailored news content. It also wanted to send compelling subscription offers to people with a high propensity to subscribe.
Facebook’s website Custom Audiences have enabled us to better address our readers’ needs, by recommending a piece of content, a newsletter or a product that is tailored to each user's individual interests. We look forward to continuing to push the limits by marrying Facebook’s technology with our own data to better serve the right message to the right user at the right time.
Mat Yurow, Director, Audience Development, The New York Times

Their Solution

Promote content to the right people

The Times’ marketing team, and its partners in data science, built a detailed model of reader behaviors that were most correlated with subscriptions. This information enabled the publisher to better segment its readership, and provided a clear roadmap of the most important steps in each prospective customer's journey.
By implementing the Custom Audience pixel (now called Facebook pixel), The Times brought the model to life. Rather than targeting based on interests or uploading a list of prospects, The Times can now dynamically categorize its readers from the least engaged to the most engaged—and serve each reader the most relevant ad, based on his or her interests and propensity to subscribe.
Lightly engaged readers receive content recommendations from sections of the website they’ve already visited, encouraging them to make a habit of returning. Moderately engaged readers receive newsletter and mobile app creative, extending the reader relationship across platforms and devices. Finally, readers identified as likely to subscribe received subscription copy and creative, tailored around topics of interest. By segmenting the audience this way, The Times delivered more relevant and efficient marketing messaging.
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Products used

Goals

Their Success

Good news all around

By targeting based on readers’ level of engagement and interests, The New York Times significantly decreased its cost per subscription, while also increasing its volume of conversions.
During June 2015, it achieved:
  • 25% reduction in cost per subscription
  • 2.3X increase in volume of subscription conversions
  • 45% increase in Facebook ad investment