Mick Weinstein's  Instablog

From the NYT Q2 earnings call, CEO Janet Robinson:

The advertising model we have used at nytimes.com has been very successful, generating more revenue than the vast majority of other websites we have studied, including some that are much larger than our site. But we believe it is very important to explore other means of deriving revenue. Therefore we are undertaking qualitative and quantitative research as to how many of our readers would be to pay for online content, and how much they would be willing to pay. We want to know more about our readers' mindsets and preferences. In this way we can find new opportunities for online revenue streams.

At this time our work is centered on a metered model and a Times membership model with special offerings. It is too early to say what this research will yield, but the process is part of our effort to augment our online advertising. We expect to have more to report in the fall.

Also, NYT's Chief Advertising Officer Denise Warren makes some interesting statements about online ad revenue, among them a reference to those big homepage takeovers:

in terms of pricing, we've, for the first half of the year, maintained and grown our pricing slightly on the online side. We did see a slight dip in Q2 on some of our premier units but again, that's really a result of the robust comps that we were up against in the prior year. We have introduced several premium display units that are garnering significant premiums and rates in the marketplace so that is really helping our display position and will bode well for us in the coming year.

Is this morning's WSJ email alert a make-up for the previous, entirely pro-Microsoft email? More likely, they still haven't woken up to the issue (click to enlarge):

I got this email alert from WSJ this morning. I think their ad sales team needs to work more closely with editorial on emails, as this is too close for comfort - though it was almost certainly unintentional. This is an issue every publisher deals with, including us. Click to enlarge: