Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders
The New York Times used to crow about the performance of its About unit, which it bought for $410 million in 2005. Not so much anymore. PaidContent has the news that About is reorganizing its operations. Business Insider claimed it is laying off its editorial team, which is apparently not the case. NYT brought in executive Martin Niesenholtz to run About, which is now regularly tagged as “troubled,” replacing Cella Irvine. The downfall of About was speeded by Google’s Panda algorithm update that hit so-called content farms hard. It’s hard to see a future where the NYT is able to turn around About, considering it is a legacy business built on search optimization at a time when Google is hellbent of fighting the spam that clogs its results.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Publishers are rebuilding their newsrooms for the post-Google era
Publishers like USA Today Co. and NYT are reshaping audience teams and creating new roles to prepare for an AI search future.
How 11 retail media networks are trying to differentiate themselves to advertisers
With the launch of myriad retail media networks, these new divisions of various consumer-facing companies are now fighting for ad dollars.
WTF is a ghost creator?
Some companies are hiring creators not for their audience, but as a mouthpiece for a very specific brief. Think execution, not creativity. This is the ghost creator.