Web 2.0 Goal-Setting at The New York Times

How does a established news institution transform itself into a sleek Web 2.0 business? Martin Nisenholtz, SVP of Digital for the New York Times Company, is having a great deal of fun discovering what it takes to get people to pay for content:

Develop circulation, not traffic

To start with, Nisenholtz has drawn a line between Web metrics and online circulation metrics. For example, millions of people will visit NYTimes.com to just read one article, or will quickly blink over a page in response to a search result or a blog link. This highly ephemeral Web traffic can add up to 2.5 million unique visitors per day. Online circulation, however, is measured at 570,000 TimesSelect subscribers.

Keeping this distinction in mind, Nisenholtz has set these goals across all digital properties:

• Attract more users, period.
• Keep users coming back, and staying longer. Increase not only the average number of visits per reader, but also the average number of page views per visit.  
• Convert casual visitors into serious readers. Even if only a fraction of the site's 20 million casual visitors each month joined the pool of 1.5 million loyal readers, it would make a significant impact on the business model.
  

The rising importance of 'circulation' numbers has driven a major shift in online advertising. Unlike a typical Web company, the Times and other news publishers don't have restrictions on the number of ad impressions per visitor. While most Web advertisers restrict the number of paid daily ad impressions to 3 or 4 per visitor, Times advertisers actually seek higher frequencies.

Transform the established culture

I visited Martin in the New York Times offices last week, and it felt like being backstage at Phantom. The New York Times has always been the real newspaper, and its impressive archive dates back to 1851. Like a tourist, I greedily enjoyed the view whenever the elevator paused to open its doors, and wondered what dastardly plans had been exposed by the innocuous-looking journalists passing by. Behind this bustling news scene, however, the organization is changing. Cross-platform sales training has become the norm, as the digital business scales. The sales team is challenged to get digital salespeople working with the advertising department, while the print staff must educate itself to become more Web-savvy.

Cultural transformation also takes place via acquisition and investment. The Times organization acquired About.com 18 months ago, and local search is being rolled out and tested in the Boston area via Boston.com. They've also made investments into Web 2.0 companies such as indeed, Federated Media Publishing, and daylife. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Federated Media.)

I suspect that core Times content will always follow an authoritative model, where information is both edited and vetted for accuracy, and there are twice as many editors as reporters. At About.com, however, each editor supports an entire classroom of guides. The publisher's next challenge is a big one: How can it leverage user-generated content? How can it become more distributed and less edited? If the Times can figure out how to edit both the 100th and the 10,000th guide profitably - or how to achieve consistent quality without editing - then the business will be well-placed to become an established institution online as well as in print.

Comments

[Tim Yang]

I think the 570,000 figure is the total number of Timesselect subscribers, not the online ones. Editor and Publisher reported in September last year that the number of online-only Timesselect subscribers was 198,690 or roughly 37% of the combined online and offline Timesselect subscribers. If 570,000 is the current combined figure, then the number of online Timesselect subscribers is about 210900, which jives with the earlier figure assuming that the upward trend has continued.

[Christine]

There was a big discussion on this at FOO Camp as well - boiled down to these rules of thumb:

- snippets/facts drive traffic
- essays/analysis build readership

So in theory, you need both if you're building an actual community or reader base. It's interesting to hear that other folks have had consistent experience.

[Jake]

The best model for this, IMO, is ESPN.com. They knew that most people were coming on to their site just to get quick scores and box scores. So they started to go after columnists who wrote LONG and entertaining pieces that people would either read right on their screen or print out at work and read in the bathroom or something like that. Then they executed that plan with people like Bill Simmons, (The Sports Guy), and a few others.

Sad to say my bosses at CNN weren't so smart. For years, I've been begging them to let me write long humorous news commentary pieces for CNN.com like I do for Newsday and a few other papers across the country. They just won't go for it though, (and it's not because it's me, they won't let ANYONE write anything long-form for them), and the result is that CNN.com is the "king of hits," but we rarely keep people on the site for long.

[GreG B.]

Ok thanks Christine. I already use the Technorati Tags but now I have to complete my profile. See you

[Christine]

Technorati - www.technorati.com

[GreG B.]

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