New York Times to launch mobile ads targeted to daily 'moments'

The New York Times (NYT) plans to launch a new type of mobile ad designed to engage readers depending on the time of day.

The ads will blend with NYT’s editorial content, and won’t be as disruptive as the site’s current ads, appearing within article feeds of the paper’s app and website.

Text-based advertisements will tend to appear in the morning alongside the newspaper’s morning briefing, while in the evening ads will be more entertaining, and feature more images and videos.

Mobile Moments is the result of 12 months research by NYT, which aimed to discover what types of content are most important to readers at different times of day.

The study identified seven key daily “moments”. Advertisers will be able to buy different types of ads within these moments.

The feature will launch in the autumn.

“This is, in our eyes, actually native advertising,” Sebastian Tomich, NYT’s senior vice president of advertising and innovation, told AdAge.

“It doesn’t have to be long-form branded content or sponsored stories. We’re essentially here just sharing the same tools our newsroom uses to promote their content in an ad unit.”