#NYTIMES NEWS ALERTS FULL#

Preiss rejected the notion, noting that for years it has been running “consumer messaging” related to the Times’ other offerings.

#NYTIMES NEWS ALERTS FULL#

Semafor recently pointed out that The Daily has been running without a full slate of paid ads in recent months. “I am very suspicious of the claim that the Times is seeing increased demand for new ad products on the audio side, when the evidence is clear that’s not the case,” one veteran podcast producer told me, noting that “many of their ad spots are empty, or only filled with New York Times ads.” Advertising for podcasts is dropping across the industry significantly, they said.

Though not everyone is buying into this rosy picture. For now, the Times is not selling the New York Times Audio app as a standalone subscription, though it is sunsetting the Audm app and folding it into the new program. The only way to access the app is if you subscribe to the Times in some way (either for news or in a bundle with its other features). Even now, the Times is seeing “increased demand for new ad products,” Preiss said, and “historic new audience heights,” with many Times shows, including The Daily, seeing “their highest audience ever, including during the insane peaks of early COVID,” in Q1. “Obviously we’re not immune to macroeconomic trends and headwinds affecting the digital media landscape broadly,” said Preiss, “but we do experience that differently.” She cites the Times’ success at the top of the charts with “a fraction of the number of shows” of competitors, and its dual advertising and subscription business. “But we believe that-kind of similar to what we’ve done in text journalism, if you will-we can start to move our most engaged users into our own apps and platforms,” Preiss said. The Times intends to maintain its audience at the top of the podcast publisher charts as well as its wide distribution and the advertising business that it runs on the backs of all of that. The app is a home for the Times’ growing audio empire, from new shows across the news and opinion sections, to Serial, which the company acquired in 2020, to its purchase of Audm, the service that turns news articles into audio, to establishing a strategic partnership with This American Life. “How do we get every second of your day?” The Times is betting on a new app, New York Times Audio, launching Wednesday, after nearly a year and a half in a private beta. The paper has long had the news alerts covered, and it’s all over social media and news aggregators, but “what does it look like for the Times to have embedded itself deeply into every single moment?” asked Preiss. She keeps a chart of it-the day in the life of a “smart, curious person”-above her desk at home. Stephanie Preiss, a Times executive in charge of the paper’s audio business, has thought about this routine a lot.

The average New York Times reader, as the Times sees it, checks their push notifications first thing in the morning, scrolls through the internet while making coffee, then puts in their headphones to listen to something as they cook, clean, commute, or walk the dog.

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