New York Times Digital Snares Distribution on Yahoo!
Yahoo! readers will soon see headlines from the New York Times' interactive unit.
Walking down the path that an increasing number of online content providers are following, the New York Times Company’s interactive unit has inked a deal with Yahoo to provide news articles to the popular portal.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but traditionally content outlets pay to have their headlines and brand names displayed in front of Yahoo’s sizeable audience.
“We look forward to expanding our reach through this additional distribution channel and to providing Yahoo users with a new entry point to our sites and our high-quality content,” said Catherine Levene, vice president of strategy and business development for New York Times Digital.
Under the terms of the agreement, New York Times Digital is providing Yahoo News with certain daily articles from the national, politics, business, international, technology, and arts area of its flagship Web site, NYTimes.com. The company will also provide local news from city sites newyorktoday.com and Boston.com.
The hope, of course, is that Yahoo users will get so hooked on the content they access on the portal, that they will soon be coming directly to the New York Times Digital sites. The deal calls for a New York Times Digital link box on Yahoo pages, which will allow readers to hop to the sites for other news and information.
In recent weeks, Yahoo has struck similar agreements with the Wall Street Journal, Rival Networks, and CCBN.
The news of the distribution deal with Yahoo comes on the heels of New York Times Digital’s other moves to attract readers and advertisers. In the past few weeks, the company announced it would begin accepting larger rich media ad sizes, following in the footsteps of CNET. New York Times Digital also recently named a new VP of sales and a VP of international sales, a newly-created position designed to capitalize on the publications’ cross-border appeal.
These recent proactive changes follow a retrenchment at the organization that included shelving plans for an IPO of a tracking stock late last year. Additionally, the company in January cut 69 positions, or 17 percent of its workforce, in an effort to reduce costs by $6 million.
