With a programmatic ad sold via an ad network, it’s possible that a devious ad that violates Times standards could sneak through. But the Times has standards for what advertisers can and can’t do, and I doubt the Times, on a whim, decided to sell its homepage to a cryptocurrency miner or something. I don’t know the details of the ad, of course. Readers would rather have a functional webpage with a gray box on it than a non-functional one with an ad.Īnd yet…on principle alone, I still can’t quite get over the idea that Google - the world’s largest advertising company, perennially investigated by regulators for its abuse of its market power, criticized for its negative impacts on the news industry - gets to decide, unilaterally, that an ad The New York Times sold can’t be shown to a New York Times reader. No one has sympathy for ads that actively harm the user experience. Let’s be blunt: Nobody likes ads that choke their browser and slow their webpage to a crawl.

It launched in late August with Chrome 84. This isn’t breaking news Google announced in May that it would start blocking “heavy” ads in Chrome. nY21T圓RnKįor those who don’t follow browser policy, that is a screenshot of Google Chrome blocking the ad the Times sold: “This ad used too many resources for your device, so Chrome removed it.” Advertiser + Publisher + Audience is the age-old equation of ad-supported media it seemed like all of its elements were coming together.īut then a company worth $1.23 trillion said no.įirst time I’ve seen this. On Wednesday, an interested Times reader - in this case, former Timesman Aron Pilhofer - decided to visit the homepage. I can’t tell you the name of the company, or the terms of the deal, but it was for the most high-profile slot the Times offers, a big interactive stripped across the top of its homepage, so the dollar figure was likely meaningful. On some recent business day, The New York Times sold an ad to a company. LINK: ➚ | Posted by: Joshua Benton | December 7, 2020

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