While big tech and regulation still play out, The New York Times continues to lead first-party data collection with products backed by the growth of its incredible subscriber base. Erin Hennessy, executive director of product marketing and insights at The Times, joined Adweek’s NexTech Summit to discuss how her team is setting the standard for what companies can do to be on the right side of privacy and protect consumers’ information. 

Leading the first-party data race 

By leveraging its unparalleled wealth of proprietary audience intelligence and tenacious work in data science, New York Times Advertising is blazing the first-party data trail, driving engagement for brands with accuracy—and privacy—well ahead of the cookieless future. 

“The New York Times is able to boast one of the largest audiences in the publishing industry—we have 10 million subscribers,” Hennessy said. “So when we’re thinking about a first-party data strategy, we’re trying to do that with integrity and respect for our users.” 

Hennessy said that having a large audience isn’t as important as some advertisers might think, and instead, how engaged the audience is should take precedence. 

“Certainly size matters, but really knowing those audiences and building trust and engagement with those audiences is part of it and then figuring out how to operationalize it,” she explained. “So adding to our portfolio, with things like Wirecutter and NYT Cooking, highlights our ability to meet an audience’s interests and passions while also giving us a lot of new signals.” 

Reinventing the wheel 

To harvest first-party data, The Times got back to basics, using an old-school advertising tactic to hear directly from their audience. It’s a strategy that Hennessy said has paid dividends, partly because it’s one that readers were already familiar with. 

“When we’re collecting and capturing first-party data, we’re doing so by way of surveys,” she said. “Every month, we get thousands of our audience members and readers to respond to the surveys voluntarily with no compensatory benefit. You can really only do that if you have a super engaged audience.” 

The Times uses a few strategies to keep its readers highly engaged in answering the surveys, all of which are rooted in knowing its audience. 

“We think about who we’re communicating with—is this a deeply engaged user or subscriber? Is it someone who’s only visited us on occasion? And how we collect that information really varies based on that, she said. 

It starts with education 

For other marketers looking to take a page out of the Times’ first-party data playbook, Hennessy said it starts with education and ensuring everybody is on board and understands the purpose behind the mission. 

“It’s not even about education with our clients, but the internal education is key,” she said. “The adoption you need to build with your sales team and your strategy team, in terms of understanding not only the methodologies but also how to harness all of the stuff we’re building and bringing out there.”