Newspaper & Mailroom

The New York Times and LinkedIn Form Strategic Relationship

Tuesday 22. July 2008 - NYTimes.com and LinkedIn announced today a strategic relationship that will give LinkedIn members a more focused and personalized experience on the Business and Technology pages of NYTimes.com. This relationship pairs two strong online brands that share a professional and engaged audience.

Under the terms of the agreement, LinkedIn users will now have news relevant to their professional industries recommended to them on the Business and Technology pages of NYTimes.com. A targeted headline feature will highlight the five latest Times articles for LinkedIn members based on their non-personally identifiable attributes. For example, LinkedIn members who work in the energy sector will have the option to receive relevant, targeted Times stories that cover the energy business.
Times readers will also be able to share and discuss stories with LinkedIn members in their networks. This feature will be incorporated into the share tool on all article pages of NYTimes.com.
“Working with LinkedIn, we have created a program that will provide readers of our Business and Technology sections with a more relevant and customized experience,” said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager, NYTimes.com. “This relationship will further our engagement with our large audience of professionals, executive decision makers and small-business employees.”
“This relationship is one of the many steps LinkedIn has taken to provide its network of members with all the information they need to stay ahead in their careers,” said Patrick Crane, vice president of marketing for LinkedIn. “With the LinkedIn-NYTimes.com integration, not only will our users be able to get the news, they will now see the news that is professionally relevant to them.”
Through this relationship, advertisers will be able to extend their targeting capabilities to more Times readers than currently available through the NYTimes.com registration process. Readers will have even better access to useful news and information, while advertisers will have a greater opportunity to speak more directly to important audiences.
“Both NYTimes.com and LinkedIn are leaders in targeting. This relationship expands NYTimes.com’s targeting capability and creates a powerful incentive for advertisers to leverage LinkedIn’s and NYTimes.com’s combined reach of the business community,” said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer, The New York Times Media Group. “Advertisers are constantly looking for context, content and quality brands and this approach delivers just that.”
This agreement upholds both companies’ commitment to protecting their members’ registration data. The non-personally identifiable data available to NYTimes.com from LinkedIn includes industry, job function, seniority, company size, gender and geography. Neither LinkedIn nor NYTimes.com will share any personally identifiable information. Readers will have the option to opt-out of this program. More information on this program can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/linkedin.
According to Nielsen Online, NYTimes.com had 17.7 million unique visitors in June and was the No. 1 newspaper Web site in the United States, a position it has long held.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with nearly 25 million members and growing by more than one million members every month.