While many have been suggesting the imminent demise of The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), the paper continues to survive. No matter your political leanings, for most the paper’s closure would truly represent a sad day in the world of journalism. However, the company’s only real source of revenue has and always will be advertising.
Meredith Levien New Chief Revenue Officer
With this in mind, the paper has announced that it has hired Meredith Kopit Levien of Forbes as its new chief revenue officer. Ms. Levien arrived at Forbes in 2008, and quickly rose through the ranks before agreeing to her new position with The New York Times.
She began here work for Forbes as group publisher of ForbesLife to chief revenue officer of Forbes Media. In that position, she oversaw the use of BrandVoice, a native advertising platform that allows marketers to directly connect with Forbes‘ audience by utilizing the same tools that journalists and contributors to Forbes use. Not only was this a first for Forbes, but for the media industry as a whole as it relates to native advertising.
The hiring of Ms. Levien marks the first business side executive to be tipped by The Times new CEO Mark Thompson. Mr. Thompson has been on the job for a mere eight months having enjoyed a run as the head of the BBC in England before accepting his position in November of last year.
The New York Times looks For New Advertising Revenue
Executive editor Jill Abramson at the Times is known to have voiced her opinion about native advertising, but these criticisms seem to have fallen on deaf ears as The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) looks for new advertising revenues. While the Times does have some experience providing special advertising sections that resemble the flow of the paper, they do not have a truly naive advertising platform.
Forbes sits on the opposite side of that spectrum having come to the forefront of the native advertising over the last few years. The lead they took in this respect has now cost them three executives to larger media enterprises.
Just last week, Forbes chief digital officer Mike Smith joined Hearst Magazines, as the vice president for revenue platforms and operations at its digital arm. Just last year, the Washington Post Co. lured former Forbes chief revenue officer Keving Gentzel, to take over the same position in Washington.
Replacing Levien as chief revenue officer will be Mark Howard, the current senior vice president for digital advertising strategy. Forbes CEO Mike Perlis announced Howard’s appointment yesterday morning in an internal memo to Forbes staff. “During his more than ten years at FORBES, he has become well versed in what our brand stands for, selling print and digital, and the power of our content model and publishing platform,” Perlis said.
