Who or What Exactly Is the New York Times’ R&D Ventures?
The New York Times Co. took the lid off a new advertising product Thursday with the introduction of Ricochet, which lets companies fuse their brand messages onto sharable NYT Co. content. Using the service, companies can create custom links to New York Times stories they select; the links take readers to a version of the story where the ads on the page are all for the company. It’s a new kind of targeted advertising: Companies select which stories they want to be associated with, then figure out the ways they want to deliver it: tweet, Facebook post, newsletter, or more.
Ricochet will be available on a handful of sites within the Times Company’s stable of properties including NYTimes.com, BostonGlobe.com, Boston.com, and About.com. The first advertiser to use the program is SAP, and you can get a sense of what Ricochet does here (compare it with the same page without the customized link). Pricing for the product will depend on the duration of a campaign and will be sold through the sales staffs at the respective NYT Co. brands.