The New York Times developed a new tech tool to determine which articles it promotes on Facebook and Twitter — without using those platforms’ tracking pixels.
The New York Times no longer uses Facebook and Twitter pixels on most of its pages. The Times has developed a new tech tool to determine which articles it promotes on Facebook and Twitter — without using those platforms’ tracking pixels.
According to an article in Digiday, the tool, called TAFI (Twitter and Facebook Interface), measures which articles draw the most social engagement with specific audiences, then adjusts spending to promote the high performers while weeding out the articles not attracting interest.
The New York Times has developed a new tech tool to determine which articles it promotes on #Facebook and #Twitter — without using those platforms’ tracking pixels. Click To TweetChris Wiggins, the Times’ chief data scientist, said that instead of using a reader’s browser history to gain more insight into the types of content they tend to read, TAFI looks at how an article has been performing organically on social and factors that into the data the Times has on readers’ interests.
For the past decade, tracking pixels on social media platforms was believed to be the only way for a marketer to achieve an effective and intelligent marketing campaign. But as Wiggins noted, “We’ve been able to show that we can use our data without that sort of exposure of reader history via a tracking pixel.”
It appears the goal for the near future is to use the homegrown tool on other platforms, such as Snapchat and Reddit, along with paid search and paid display advertising.
