New York Times Plans to Make Its Mobile Ads More Native, Less Interruptive

"Mobile advertising as a whole is just fairly crappy," said Sebastian Tomich, The New York Times senior VP of advertising and innovation.

Mr. Tomich isn't saying anything controversial. Most people seem to agree that those thin horizontal banners pinned to the bottom of publishers' mobile sites haven't won many fans. Neither have the full-screen interstitial ads that can overtake a smartphone's screen while swiping between articles on many publishers' mobile sites, including the Times'. So the Times is doing away with them.

"We're retiring at some point late this summer -- maybe early fall when we can run the last one that's already been sold -- we're retiring mobile interstitials. We're trying to move to a place where the less desirable mobile ad units, where we actually free our experience of them," said New York Times Chief Revenue Officer Meredith Levien.

In place of the interruptive mobile ads, the Times is adopting a mobile ad format that's akin to Facebook's and Twitter's in-feed mobile ads.

Source: 
Adage