Increasing the optimisation of online advertising is important for all online businesses, and we saw two interesting moves this week, by a publisher and a platform.
First up, fresh from its R&D unit, The New York Times declared that it would be launching a service called Spark, which will sell advertising based on stories that are live trending on Twitter, and accordingly valuing different spaces on its site. The move allows the newspaper to monetise an optimisation tool already used by editors, which was monitoring popularly read and shared stories.
Elsewhere, Facebook announced a new web layout for its newsfeed, which some are calling the biggest development since 2009. The new look is based largely on Facebook’s devices app, which give prominence to ads.
The move comes in the same week that Facebook announced partnerships with several offline shopping data specialists. The companies will be aligning Facebook IDs with the data held by partner companies, which includes loyalty program data, meaning that businesses will be able to better target users in segments such as ‘soda drinkers’ or ‘auto intenders’. It’s a massive move in the alignment of online and offline shoppers’ data.
