FORT LAUDERDALE — Google’s YouTube announced last month it would switch from Flash to powering its video player in HTML5 by default. But the video site wasn’t the only property to have gone in that direction.
The New York Times went to HTML5-first a few years ago now, out of a “toolbox” that has been used by editorial, Interactive Stories and Paid Posts teams, NYT product management director Sara Poorsattar tells Beet.TV.
The player is being used for both editorial and ads in NYT’s “36 Hours In…” travel series. “We take a Standard VPAID overlay ad for each individual video we put out; (it) uses the Google API,” Poorsattar says. “As the interviewer in the video is talking about a very specific restaurant, you can go and bring up Google Maps information for that restaurant; how to get there.
“(It) brings this advertiser closer to the content, while still respecting the autonomy of the edit voice in the content.”
Poorsattar says mobile consumption is more than 50% of New York Times traffic – meaning a key 2015 imperative is monetizing that new traffic source.
She was interviewed by Hulu ad sales SVP Peter Naylor at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
