HACKER Q&A
📣 alpb

The New York Times digital subscription business model?


Hi folks, I just realized even after subscribing to digital NYTimes (https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digital-subscriptions), they continue to show ads both on mobile and web.

On web, the ads are especially super annoying. While trying to read a long article, you see the same half-screen filling ad over and over after every two paragraphs. Sometimes it's like 10x shaver ads for me per article.

So I naturally cancelled my subscription. I am curious why/how they're able to sell this digital subscription. I can't seem to find any value adds.

  👤 tedd4u Accepted Answer ✓
If you don't subscribe, they severely restrict the number of articles you can read per month (in my recent experience, as few as one).

If you try to get around this with Chrome incognito mode, you'll see a message like this: "Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode." Seems like they cannot currently detect Safari incognito mode though.

Notes:

1) I am a paying NYT digital subscriber. I am happy to pay for quality, fact-checked journalism.

2) I do run ad-blockers so that is part of the picture in my environment. Maybe the way this enforcement works is different for people that are not blocking ads. I haven't tested.

👤 rchaud
Apparently the NYT are removing open marketplace programmatic ads on their mobile app due to their slow loading times.

https://adexchanger.com/publishers/new-york-times-will-pull-...

It's not clear if this includes ads only on NYT's own ad network or all third party ad exchanges.

👤 Nextgrid
This is exactly why I don't subscribe to any newspaper online. There's no guarantee they won't take your money and show you ads or resell your information (which is worth more as it's browsing habits tied to validated payment information you provided during signup).
👤 duxup
I'm happy to subscribe to the NYT.

I care more about the quality of content rather than if I saw an advertisement.