Nielsen to use mobile in New York Times campaign

By Mickey Alam Khan

March 11, 2008

Denise Warren is senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times

Media and research giant Nielsen Co. will use mobile in a brand awareness campaign running exclusively this summer in The New York Times Co.’s print, online and mobile properties.

The campaign, which comes a year after Nielsen rebranded from the VNU name, will mark the first time for an advertiser to get multiplatform placement across the New York Times’ properties including mobile.nytimes.com. Nielsen will also be the sole advertiser for a special August issue of Play, The New York Times’ sports magazine dedicated to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

“Mobile is part of the overall cross-platform advertising package,” said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at The New York Times, New York.

“The majority of readers on mobile.nytimes.com are business professionals who access news and information through smartphones such as BlackBerries,” she said. “This is a great audience for Nielsen and it also builds awareness for their online and mobile research capabilities.”

The Nielsen ads will appear in the Olympic issue of Play distributed with the Aug. 3 Sunday edition of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune in Asia.

Play is distributed four times a year in the Sunday New York Times. It is available online at nytimes.com/play and in a weekly mobile newsletter published and sent each Thursday.

In addition, print ads will appear in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune newspapers, along with banner ads on the sites at www.nytimes.com and www.iht.com, radio spots and ads in the mobile Play newsletter.

Creative for the ads, including the mobile media, is not currently available for public viewing. But the format of mobile ads is already set.

“Banner and text ads will run across the NYTimes.com mobile site,” Ms. Warren said. “The banner ad is in a prominent position just below the NYTimes.com masthead and is a great display unit in an uncluttered environment.”

Readers will be able to click through the mobile ads.

“Nielsen is excited about where mobile’s at and where mobile’s going and that’s one of the reasons for our mobile ads,” said Paul M. Okimoto, vice president of corporate strategy at Nielsen Mobile, San Francisco.

Privately held Nielsen rebranded last year as part of a streamlining exercise.

Based in Haarlem, The Netherlands and New York, Nielsen’s properties include research houses such as AC Nielsen, Nielsen Media Research, NetRatings, BuzzMetrics and Nielsen Mobile, formerly Telephia until its purchase last year; trade shows; and magazine titles such as Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek.

“The focus is on the Nielsen brand and we’re bringing together these companies in a different way,” Mr. Okimoto said.