Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations of individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected.

We’ll introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my very special guest is Tusar Barik. Tusar is the SVP of Marketing for The New York Times Advertising, focused on the long-term go-to-market strategies and advertising strategies across The New York Times portfolio of brands. Think news, cooking, wire cutter, the athletic, audio, and games. He and his team have been focused on enabling and engaging agencies and customers to help them exceed their marketing goals and drive sustainable growth through The New York Times platforms.

Prior to joining The New York Times, he spent over seven years as LinkedIn leading marketing. His experience has been in advertising, marketing, and ad tech through agencies, client, and consultant side. He lives here in the Northeast in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, son, and daughter, Tusar. Welcome to the podcast, my friend. How are you doing?

Tusar Barik 

Great, thanks so much for having me, Bennie. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Bennie 

My goodness, it’s really a delight to have you here with such, you know, responsibility on activating such a dynamic platform. I jokingly said before, as we close the year out in this holiday season, that you’re responsible for separating families, my friend, breaking people apart. I love, you know, the fact that my family is super fans of everything New York Times games.

Tusar 

Hahaha. Yes.

Bennie 

And watching my wife and kids and in-laws actively exclude me. It’s wonderful.

Tusar

Well, I’m sorry that there’s a bit of a riff in your family, but I also can’t help the competitive nature that you must have with your entire family.

Bennie

My goodness, it’s a wonderful space. And then, you know, from the games, we moved naturally into the recipe space, which

Tusar

Yes. Do you compete on the cooking too of who makes the best version of the dish or is there a little less competition there? That’s good. Food is what unites people, right? So that’s good.

Bennie

I think there’s a little less competition. We’re probably focused on just good food. Yeah, in effect, you become the tiebreak. Because if there are random family recipes that are out, you go to The New York Times cooking recipe to get the source of truth. There was a check on a sweet potato dish that happened recently. I can tell you that, that there was a New York Times check-in and there was a conversation and debate.

Tusar

I think Yes, that is true. That’s right. Oh wow, Oh yeah, yeah.

Well, that’s good to know. You’ll have to do, I don’t know if you know last week was actually cookie week at The New York Times cooking. Have you heard about this? Yeah. Yeah. You should go look at it and you guys can do every day. There’s a different cookie and you can each make one and then see which one you like best. I’ll give you a little quick background on it. So what happened was, it actually started back during the pandemic when people were home and cooking and baking. If you remember the whole like flour shortage that was happening in 2020.

Bennie

I did not, which now I feel like I’ve missed out on something, but I’ll go back and we’ll make these cookies. Right. Yes.

Tusar 

But what we saw was right after Thanksgiving in the US, the number of searches for cookies and cookie-related recipes goes up 5x on New York Times cooking. So literally starting in December as soon as Thanksgiving ends, for the holidays, of course, so we were like, gotta do this. And Thanksgiving is like, what I’d call the Super Bowl of New York Times cooking, as you’d imagine. And so we then developed, the team developed this entire franchise around Cookie Week. And so it was, it’s been around for about five, six years. And this year we were actually very fortunate that we were able to find a very unique partner with McCormick to do some, for the first time ever, some product integration, which was really cool to be able to do that. So yeah, but yeah, you’ll have to, you’ll have to do some, do some competitive cookie baking.

Bennie 

Right, right. I think we do. We have to add that to the list. We were joking that in my household last year, the hottest Christmas gift to search for wasn’t tech. It wasn’t fashion. It was the very simply well-done 365 days of New York Times cookie recipes. And we couldn’t find it, my friend. It was sold out on your site. was sold out online. You know, I found it in the bowels of a bookstore and was so excited. But I want to talk a bit about that.

Tusar 

Exactly. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bennie

You know, these are moments of brand joy and unexpected. How do you go from the story New York Times that we kind of understand in a full media sense to these kind of brand extensions that have really come a part of our pop culture?

Tusar

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say it’s very interesting. like, so, as you mentioned in the beginning, I joined the Times just under a year ago. So I joined in January, the fortune and privilege to be here now for just about a year. And I’ll start with this. Like it’s been amazing after joining, you I go and see folks that I’ve known for many years and I see them at industry events or I see them out in the world or at the airport, if you will, when I’m busy traveling and things like that. And I’ll always say, you know, I’m at the Times now, they’ll ask how it’s going. And every single person, like I cannot name not one person who didn’t do this. As soon as I say I’m at The New York Times now has exactly what you just had a very unique direct relationship with The New York Times, whether that be, you know, of course, like the news, but also with cooking, with games, everyone. I talked to one person I went to, I think, like high school with, and we were just messaging. We haven’t talked in a while, but Small World ran into one of his family members. So I reached out to him to say hi. And he told me about how his grandfather has played crosswords since like, you know, since the sixties, right? When it was. And so, and so like, and then I had another person I met that told me about how his wife has a very strong feelings about Michael Barbaro’s voice on the daily because, you know, her father was actually in the hospital for a good amount of time and she would go every morning to go see him and sit with him and she would listen to the daily every morning and Michael’s voice was what was calming and soothing to her. So everyone has, and the scale of this like unique relationship that millions and millions of people have is just, it’s amazing. And so, you know, to answer your question, for me, coming here, of course, to your point, The New York Times, first and foremost, internally, we call it like a solar system, right? The news is the center of that solar system. That is who we are, that is the core of what we do. But everything else we do, there is a relationship that happens between all of the other portfolio brands that we have, that be how we think about having the best recipes for cooking to make sure people can cook, as we talked about, thinking about the games and how it’s… you know, a productive amount of time you’re spending when you’re playing our games. If you think about the athletic, it has the largest sports newsroom that exists and it’s going beyond just scores. It’s talking about how do you get more in depth to understand what’s going on in the sport that you love or the team that you love and whether it’s or it’s Wire Cutter and you’re thinking about what to buy, you can trust the editorial independence of it because at our core, we are a news organization and that editorial independence remains in everything we do across all of our, all of our brands. And so I would say like that’s the key, right? We are true to who we are. We’re about to be 175 years old next year. That’s our anniversary. And we’ve always maintained true to who we are over the long term. And that’s paid off every time.

Bennie 

So when you think about your recent journey at the Times, talk about day one and talk about today. This has been an incredible year. What are some of the kind of breakthrough lessons you’ve thought about from day one to now?

Tusar 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I started in very early January and let me say more macro. What a wild year it’s been. Right. So I tell people like both on a personal level and personal level this is the fastest longest year I’ve ever experienced in my life. Right. Just every day something new is coming on going on. And so coming into this organization I will say day one, I came because I saw there was so much potential growth value, right? I think like The New York Times as a whole is an amazing organization. You know, we have an amazing business as well in terms of we have over 12 million subscribers, 150 million registered users. But what I saw was there’s an opportunity within the advertising space in particular that I felt that I could be part of and think about what the next generation of advertising with The New York Times looks like.

And so when I started, had just a year ago, we had just begun to have advertising across our entire portfolio. Before that last year, you could really get it on a couple of our brands and not across the entire portfolio that we have. So from then to now, we’ve seen a ton of growth in terms of how marketers can interact with our very unique audience. Now, 50 to 100 million people a week come to one or more of our properties. And that scale, I don’t think people fully realize. Again, to the point that I talked about earlier, everyone has this very unique relationship with The New York Times in some way. I don’t think people realize the scale at which that exists. And so being able to tell that story and help marketers and advertisers connect with this very unique audience that only The New York Times has is pretty amazing. Over the course of a year, just on the advertising side, we’ve done a ton of things. We’ve launched six different ad products. We’ve expanded video opportunities. We’ve expanded an AI tool that marketers can use. So we’ve done a ton of stuff in this past year that’s just like been amazing and great. And it’s funny when I like think back, I’m in a moment of reflection, I guess, just because it’s the end of the year, you know? And I just think back to all the from-tos that we’ve gotten to, and it’s just been amazing to see all the different innovation on whether it be ad formats, it be on targeting, whether it be on our measurement, whether it be even within the edition of we just launched our watch tab so people can see more video. We produce 75 hours of professional video every month. And so being able to see the expansion that’s happened, it’s been an amazing year.

Bennie

You know, I’d love to kind of think about this. You have The New York Times, which is a story brand. And you’re in advertising spaces where I’m sure there’s some advertisers who’ve had experience in the past. Describe that experience when advertisers get to see the new.

Tusar 

Yeah, yeah, totally. There are, you know, it’s funny. So actually, right when I started in a couple months later, we actually held our first new front after six years at The New York Times. And so we did that in like March or April timeline. And we had, you know, several hundred people that came in and we did it. And we talked about the power of the portfolio and the fact that we had so many new things coming out within the next year. And I kid you not, literally, people’s eyes open up are like, wow, I haven’t, I haven’t.

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

Tusar

Right? Like I haven’t thought about that. And it’s an amazing opportunity. You know, one of the things we also see, so Cantar just did this report earlier this year where they, across the world, think they surveyed 21,000 people across the world. And what they did is they actually surveyed consumers and then also marketers. In the U.S., the number one place that consumers are most receptive to advertising is The New York Times beats every other platform, any other place you name, it beats them on that survey. But for advertisers, we are not as high. And that’s the gap I’m looking to fill. I’m looking to make sure that marketers realize, like, we have a unique audience that wants to connect with the right marketing messages, and we can help them do that. So being able to get that and do that is something that I’m just very excited that we have just started to do. And to your question, like, people who were advertisers 30 years ago. 

There are still some advertisers that are here now, but they were print advertisers, right? Now, print is still something we have, of course, but like, let’s be honest, it’s in secular decline. And that’s just the reality of print. Print is still very important, but we now have a whole ecosystem in the digital space. And we’ve seen tremendous growth in digital. Now, we’re, we every quarter, thankfully, since I’ve been here, we’ve seen like more growth on the digital advertising side. This last quarter, we had over 20 % year over year growth on the digital advertising side. And so…

Bennie

Right, right.

Tusar 

It’s pretty amazing how much marketers are starting to see the value. I think the, you know, the reason is it’s a couple of old one, of course, when you want to say something, you want to say it on The New York Times. Of course, that’s the reality. But also marketers are under, and I’m sure you know this better than anyone, like they’re under increasing pressure to deliver value and we’re helping them deliver that value. Um, and that’s, you know, one of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about what have I really tried to focus my teams on when I came in, you know, I came in there was about five or six different teams that came together under me. My role didn’t really exist before. And so what I told them is we have to become customer focused and customer obsessed. How do we make sure we’re delivering value for our customers? And how do we understand what they need to get done and how we can help?

Bennie

So what are some of the techniques you use to break through on that? I imagine kind of that resistance, right? You end up in this like, I hear New York Times, I think print, right? And I kind of lock it in, but we’ve just talked about all these spaces in which platform, content extension, video, AI, right? You’re doing the best of the best.

Tusar

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, totally. You know, I think it’s a couple of fold. I think one it’s, we’ve, we’ve released a ton of great stuff. Need to make the market aware of it but what we’re really trying to do on that point of customer obsession and customer focus, that we’re trying to get to more and more is I would say for my teams, one of the first things we did is we, came up with an understanding of the marketing funnel in terms of what jobs do marketers have to get done or jobs to be done is, you know, the saying. And so we looked at the marketing funnel and we said, okay, there’s some about just building brand awareness, then there’s about shifting perception, driving consideration, and of course, helping close deals and get to conversion, if you will. So then what we did is because part one of the teams I oversee is our measurement data and insights team. And so what we did is we then ran an analysis of all the campaigns we ran and all the different ad props we have to be able to come up with a framework for, hey, marketers, when you’re trying to do, you building brand awareness, these are the products that can help do that. Or when you’re trying to drive consideration, these are the things that we can do. And we built up this entire measurement and solutions framework to get that for our customer so we can help them. And so the first step is, of course, just making sure people are aware of all the things that we’ve done. And so we’re starting to get that out there and show the success that campaigns and clients are having. But we also need to make it easy for them. We can’t just throw out them like, here’s 80 different products you choose what you wanna buy, right? It’s like being at the Cheesecake Factory. There’s so many choices. It’s hard to figure out what you, or just being from New Jersey, it’s like being at a diner, right? And you have that long menu. So we need to also make it around solutions that help them achieve the goals they need because marketers are under increasing pressure to show results and we need to help them do that.

Bennie

Right, right, right. Right? Definitely. It gives you an opportunity to, in effect, have your service offering. These are the things that will get you where you need to be. Now, so The New York Times, an incredible brand. You don’t have to worry about someone knowing what is The New York Times when you walk through. Prior to that, you were at another brand that defines our world at LinkedIn. So talk about some of the challenges you had there building LinkedIn as a platform. You were there through a tremendous period of growth and transformation of what LinkedIn leads in our professional lives.

Tusar 

Totally, yeah, yeah. I was similarly on the advertising side. So I was in the marketing solutions business, working through building out how do we think about how we solve marketers needs. I will actually, to your question, I’ll actually push a little bit back on it just because although yes, people know The New York Times, that opens a lot of doors, but also they think of The New York Times as one specific thing, which is the news. And so actually what we’re trying to get them to do is understand that full portfolio. And so, you know, in both cases, whether before where I was or now, there is a lot of perception changing. We are very fortunate in both situations, very fortunate that at the base, there is a very strong brand, that be LinkedIn, whether that be New York Times, but there’s a very specific people.

Bennie

Right. Right.

Tusar 

People have a mindset for that. So at LinkedIn, it was a job site. That’s what they were thinking about it primarily and becoming.

Bennie

Right, right. And it becomes your point, it becomes the blessing and the curse, right? They know they know you, but for just a limited range of things, right? That the brand has worked in such a way that you’re kind of locked in and as an innovator, you’re working against

Tusar 

100 % yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so at The New York Times, what we’re really trying to do is, especially for marketers, is really showcase how much we mean more to more people every day and every year. And I mean, even in our conversation when we started talking about the fact that, you know, the first thing we actually talked about when you talked about your family was the games and the competitiveness with The New York Times, or you talked about cooking. We didn’t even talk about the fact that we have world-class journalism in our, um, we are defining journalism. We are keeping independent journalism strong and alive. We have a 2,000 person, you know, newsroom that exists within The New York Times. When other newsrooms are shrinking, we’re hiring, right? We’re expanding. And so, you know, I think the thing is people realize these things in silos. What I’m trying to do, especially for marketers, is understand that, hey, this is all an opportunity across the entire portfolio that we can help. And what we see is on the consumer and I should say like consumers first and foremost, the most important thing, right? Making sure that a consumer is finding value and making sure that they understand how we mean more to them each and every day and the value we give them every day. So when we do that, we also find on the consumer side that those who spend time with not just one of our brands, but across the portfolio, they find more and more value each and every day and they do right on the marketer side and the advertising side. We also find a very similar thing where it’s if you are marketing or advertising on more than one of our portfolio of brands, you end up getting much better results because you’re with that consumer on their journey of what they’re doing. Right. And so, so that’s what that’s, that’s, I’d say, the opportunity that I’m really trying to go after. And we’ve started to see just the beginning of it. And I’m very excited for what the next couple of years actually play out in terms of how much we can really open up that aperture for marketers to understand that this exists. And it can be both like how they experience it physically, whether that be in print or some of the events we do. A couple of weeks ago we had Dealbook and it was an amazing event where Andrew O. Sorkin brought in the best lineup I’ve ever seen at an event, to be honest. But then we had marketers that were able to spread their brand message across. And then we also have…digitally, right? Whether that be how we show up in all the different apps that we have and how it comes across. So it’s a great opportunity and I’m really excited for what that looks like.

Bennie

I’m intrigued by one of the things you mentioned about the journey space in there and thinking about how your products follow you throughout the day, kind of the digital space. You’ve got these natural check-ins when you come in. You start your day, what’s happening. You start your day with the CrossFit puzzle. You end your day with these spaces that go in. What do you wish that marketers knew as they go into that? What do you wish that they knew?

Tusar 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s exactly that. mean, you just described it for me. Thank you. So it’s literally the fact that within the course of a day, we have high engagement across the board. I think, actually, before I fully answer, I do want to ask you a question. So what do you start your day with? Do you start with playing a game or do you end it or do you do it in the middle of day or changes?

Bennie

For me, it changes, but that’s because my days are crazy. But for my kids, they’ve got to settle, know, school gives them a settled structure. 

Tusar 

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think because it’s interesting how everyone I talked to has a different answer because in the beginning, everyone thinks you’re the first person actually that told me that they have it throughout the day, different times. And that makes a ton of sense. Everyone has their own structure and they think everyone else follows that structure, which is why I start my day with it. I start my day with, now, do my Wordle. Then I listen to the daily on my commute. Then I read the breaking news and then I come home and I look at cooking to figure out what to cook for dinner. But that’s actually not true.

Bennie

Right.

Tusar 

There, then I met someone over the summer and she was telling me, you know, during the day I’m actually on cooking and I’m actually sending cooking recipes to some of my colleagues to give ideas for what to cook for your family. And so everyone’s got their own unique journey that they have.

Bennie

It’s so interesting. So for me, as I hear you talking about that, cooking, if I’m working on cooking at seven, six at seven, even it’s too late, right? I’m thinking about cooking in the morning because I’ve got to have this downhill flow, like, okay, what are we having for dinner? What are we thinking about? Right? Yeah.

Tusar

Yeah. Yeah. And so everyone has their own unique journey, but they’re across our entire portfolio as they think about what they’re doing. So, you know, that journey that people are on is just, it’s just, we’ve enabled them to be able to do whatever works best for them. And so, you know, what we’re telling, what we try to tell the marketers is, hey, we’ve got this incredible consumer journey that’s happening throughout the day each and every day. And the other thing I try to talk them about too is traditionally, if you ask people who we compete with, they will tell you other publishers, right? So they will tell you a number of newspapers or news organizations that we compete with. And yes, that’s true, but the scale to which we operate is significantly more than, and actually on par with some of the platforms that are out there, right?

And so, know, I mentioned before, we have 50 to 100 million people a week that come to one or more of our properties. We talk a lot about our subscription base being very strong. It’s over 12 million subscribers, but we also have 150 million registered users who are very active within our ecosystem as well. And so the fact that we have this like huge, large audience pool is something that marketers are able to not just get a large scale pool of people, but a highly engaged set of people that also for what it’s worth are doing highly productive things, right? They’re either learning, they’re playing, but they’re playing quality games. They’re teaching themselves. It’s a productive mindset that you can’t get on the internet in a lot of other places, you know? And so that’s the thing that I think marketers are starting to come to realize more.

Bennie

Well, I’m going to ask this question. This is the first time I’ve ever on our podcast had someone who I could ask this question with who lives in the same brand space that I do. So we’re going to talk about our global reach and impact and marketing global when you have a geographic location and proximity in your brand name. So I, I’ll go first. I am the American Marketing Association, right? Yet we are the AMA and it’s really about, we are about the global profession and a significant percentage of our members and our activity and programming is outside of the US. You know, you’re The New York Times. But I know you’re more than just…

Tusar 

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. We are, we are more than New York. We are more than even just the US right. We are a very global brand. We have a large, subscription and registered base with internationally actually that’s, that’s, really strong. and it’s getting stronger and it’s because we have the portfolio brands. So yes, of course they come to us for the news because although yes, we are called The New York Times. We report around the world. have journalists around the world that are constantly working to make sure we get the information out there. But also, so I was actually in London last month. We did an event in London where we highlighted a couple of the key things where we see the most usage actually in the UK and I would just say pan Europe is around games and the athletic and news of course. But people play word all, so just on a global scale, 2,000 people a minute are sharing their Wordle score. 2,000 people a minute, right? And so it’s wild how ingrained games are part of the whole world experience and how we think about that. And so, you know, I was talking to folks in London and they’re like, yeah, I play Wordle every day on the tube or whatever. And so we have this like engaged audience around the world, but to be honest, they don’t necessarily think about it as a New York Times game. It’s just a game they play. Right. And then the athletic, because of our, for the US people, soccer for outside football, the coverage is second to none with the athletic and how they go in. And we have probably the number one reporter, they call it transfers. We call it trade in the US, but like the number one reporter to report on transfers that happen within the premier league and other leagues. And so we have a really strong international base.

Bennie

Right.

Tusar

But to your point in the same thing you’re dealing with, we deal with two of, oh, you guys are in New York. And I was like, no, we’re actually way, way there. We’re a 175 year old brand that is actually has global impact. And you can go anywhere in the world and they’ll know who The New York Times is. And they’ll have some, and just like I just mentioned the relationship that everyone has, they also have a relationship. It’s just a slightly different relationship with them. Yeah. Yeah.

Bennie 

So when we talk about the Athletic, I’d be remiss if we didn’t ask you this question. Are you ready for the World Cup?

Tusar

As ready as can be, I’ve got to, so I’m going to be completely honest with you. I am a big American football fan and also a Formula1 fan. And by the Formula1 coverage on the Athletic is amazing as well, as is the NFL highlights actually as well that we just launched this year with amazing videos and analysis. I am ready for the World Cup, but also I’m like, this is going to be wild across three countries.

Bennie

Okay. Yeah, the largest field ever put together. So you think about the stories and the opportunities. I ask, from a spectator standpoint, it’s getting ready for that kind of season. But from an advertising platform…

Tusar 

Yeah. Yes, we have so much going on with the World Cup in terms of how we’re going to cover it, what’s going to happen. We’re actually working with a ton of marketers and advertisers to help them think about their integrations with the World Cup and what that looks like. I feel like next year is really a year of sports with the World Cup happening. Obviously, you’ve got the Super Bowl here starting the year, and then we’re going to go into the World Cup and all the other annual things that happen.

Bennie

Right.

Tusar

The World Cup is going to change the landscape. I’m also excited for what it means for soccer in the US and the expansion of how people start to get more. Soccer has always been popular, but I think we’re really going to see some popularity increase after this.

Bennie

Really interesting and I’ve been thinking about this next year’s sport really as being the primer or the pregame for 28 Yeah, right

Tusar

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, then you got the Olympics and all that and it’s gonna be in LA, I think in 28. Right. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s gonna be great.

Bennie

Yeah, it’s an LA in 28. That’s from a brand perspective. If you think about all of the brand mayhem, positives that they call it.

Tusar 

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And, and you know, from a brand and a marketing perspective, the other thing is marketers, you know, grabbing people’s attention gets harder every day, right? There’s just so much. And sports is one of those few things that really like people combine around, go around and like can still grab that attention for a prolonged period of time. And so it’s just amazing opportunity. And frankly, that’s, I think part of the reason we’ve seen so much commercial success with the Athletic too, because it hits a different tone with people. It’s a unique way for brands and marketers to really think about how they can interact with their audience.

Bennie 

You know, one of the things that I always find interesting and fascinating for brands is when you put together a portfolio and you look from a distance, it’s one of those things that you would never start off putting these things together, but somehow they just work. We were talking about the energy around games, cooking, and Athletic, right? That should not be one business. But it works.

Tusar

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does. Well, and it works. It works because we are very intentional about what we do. Right. And I give full credit. This was all done before I was here, but like full credit to our CEO, Meredith and our entire executive team and board have they thought about like these opportunities. And I’ve actually talked to her about this and how, how they think about this. And the reality is, is the reason it works is we are very true to who we are. Goes back to that solar system analogy again, that the news is the center for our solar system and everything we do outside of that has to make sure it fits within that solar system. And that’s why the Athletic made a ton of like, it made a ton of sense of an acquisition. And by the way, if you go back to the articles that were written when the Athletic acquisition happened, there’s a lot of negative press that was like, Oh, are they paying too much for this? Why are they doing this? It’s a money losing business. It’s been an amazing success. Right. And, and the reason is, is… It’s not just a site that gives you scores. It goes so much further than scores, right? It gives you so much more detail. Again, with Wirecutter, right? It’s editorial independence. cannot be a product that can go and say, hey, I’ll pay you to go review my stuff. Like, no, we have a set of folks that are editorially separate. They review and they do what they think is right and make sure that they get out there. Again, like cooking, everything. All that we’ve done in games as well, even games like games make sense because of the types of games. You were not just putting out a game that’s about like eating a piece of candy, right? It’s a game that is intellectually stimulating and being able to, you know, do that. And now, you know, originally it was all word games. We’ve just launched the first number game, right? In terms of pips, it’s like a domino style game, which by the way, I’m not great at the word games, but I’m really good at the number game. The pips is my thing.

Bennie 

You’re gonna never guess?

Tusar 

And then we have some other new exciting stuff coming out early next year that we’re excited will be out.

Bennie 

So what can we talk about? I don’t want to tempt you with the things we can’t talk about, but what’s going to be our zone?

Tusar 

Yeah, no, I mean, we’re thinking about it on the game side, we’re you one of the things we’ve kind of hinted at a lot of it, right, in terms of there is a community that naturally exists, right? 2,000 people a minute share their Wordle score. We talked about your family’s competitiveness that exists in almost every family. We are very excited about the fact that like we’ve launched family plan and now, you know, instead of people sharing how to score, they can actually keep track of their own score and who plays Worlde first and all that.

The other thing to think about is how do we help build community? So that’s going to be a big focus as we think about community, how we do that within games going into next year. The other big thing I’ll say is we think a lot about video, so outside of games, but really just video generally across our portfolio. One of the things about the times being on a 25-year-old brand is we’ve seen a lot, right? We’ve seen a lot of change.

And like I mentioned, now, 30 plus years ago, it was a print newspaper that evolved. People went online. So we had a website, then we had an app, but then it was, you know, people don’t just read long form content. So we started thinking about data visualization and how you, how you, how people, want to interpret and think about things, and be able to see that. And now video is something that continues to be a way that people want to consume information and get it. And so video has been something that’s very important to us that we spent a lot of time on continuing to think about, again, in a way that’s unique to us. It’s not user generated video. We produce 75 hours or more of professional video on news that is our reporters going, looking at the camera and telling you a little more about the story they wrote about. In cooking, we have a bunch of video forward, video and creator forwards series that are about the people in New York Times cooking and showing how they make it and things like that.

And so we think about across and with the Athletic I mentioned, we have highlights from the NFL that we launched this year, thinking through how we make sure that video and sports is something that’s important. And, you know, we think about these as all opportunities of how to engage people in a way they want to be engaged. That’s still a need for us. And even within games, we have some video where we’ve actually from an advertising perspective enabled a full video advertising opportunity before the game plays. It’s one of our best units, actually has the highest viewability because it’s a short form ad that’s right before gameplay. And then also we just launched at the end of this year, we launched Watchtab, which is on our app and you can swipe through the different stories and videos that we have across our entire portfolio. And when I say swipe through, I think people immediately think of social networks at a short form video.

This is not that right, it is in the sense that you are swiping up. Yes, that’s true. But outside of that, these are not like 10 second videos. These are like minute 45 second videos that people are consuming because it can, they are productive videos to society. I’m getting into those. And so what I’m excited about from an advertising perspective is we, um, going into early next year, we’re going into open beta where we’re talking to advertising partners to have an opportunity to show their message in that watch tab. So you’ll start to see that come out. Um, so yeah, a lot of, a lot of exciting stuff.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Okay. Well, it’s interesting when you kind of take it as you take it in the small moments and the large moments, like the entire brand, your brand is deeply committed. And these we as consumers feel this commitment to making us better. Right. These are faster, more informed, smarter, makes us, you know, gives us bragging points of our family, hit, hit, right. All these spaces that go into it. You know, I wonder, how that sits in a world in which we find new and rapid ways to introduce AI. A lot of the promises, AI will make us faster, better, and smarter. You live a brand that does that. What’s that tension for you like these days with AI as an offering?

Tusar

Yeah, yeah. I mean, AI, now, again, we are as a company as a whole, we are always innovative and working to make sure we do things in our own way. And so we think about AI as a company of how it helps us. I’ll start with as New York Times as whole, then I’ll go specific to advertising. But The New York Times as a whole, you know, we think about how can AI help us be more productive. So in the newsroom, you know, what would have taken five reporters 70 hours to sift through thousands and thousands of pages of files, we have AI tools they can use to help them surface out details that then is verified by a human, but it helps helps make efficiencies in how we think that we are still a human led organization. Our reporting will and continue to always be around human led reporting and making sure that happens. So it’s never going to write an article for us, but it’s going to help us sift through large amounts of data that can help save time so we can get the right information out quicker to people. Because our mission of seeking the truth and helping people understand it, that’s what it can help us do.

On the advertising side, we’re super excited. We actually just passed the one year anniversary of our generative AI solution. So it’s called brand match. And what that effectively does is it takes a brand or advertisers RFP or brief. We then upload that into our, into our AI system and it’s able to find the most relevant content and audience based on that brief. Every day, as you know, we’re coming out with new thousands of pieces of new content, right? As new articles are written out, things like that. And so we are able to find the content that will perform best for what that brief is trying to achieve. And so, you know, we’ve seen tremendous success. We’ve had over 150 campaigns run across pretty much every category we have, whether that be luxury, publishing, education, travel, and we’ve seen tremendous impact from it. So on average, our click-through rates are 30 % higher. We’re also from a, if it’s video, it’s a video campaign, we’re also seeing about 30 % higher than average completion rates, video completion rates. And we’ve had like clients of all types, whether it be in the publishing space, Crown Publishing saw CTRs above 1%. Belmont, luxury brand did this amazing sponsorship around train travel. And we were able to get over 1 % click-through rates on that as well. like we’re seeing, and we also saw over 200,000 content views. So we’re just, we’re seeing a ton of success to be able to help marketers using AI in a way that’s productive.

It helps them find the right content to connect with. so, you know, we’ve actually, we won a couple of awards for it, which has been great. And so it’s really exciting how we can use it in a way that makes sense for who we are.

Bennie

So I’m going to ask you this. We’ve got a whole audience listening of marketers out here. What advice do you have for them to be creative and take advantage of all these offers? Yeah, and generally, in the platforms that you’re talking about on The New York Times, space in there, what advice? Because I know there’s some people sitting here salivating going, well, I need that for my brand. Where do I start?

Tusar

Yeah, in terms of the AI or just generally. Yeah, well, I would love to chat with you more about it to be able to figure out what are you trying to achieve and how we can do it. Again, I go back to what I said a little bit ago, like we are obsessed with helping marketers figure out what are they trying to solve? What jobs are they trying to do? And how can we help them do that? We’ve created an entire playbook around it and we are happy to share that with anyone to be able to help them based on what they need to get done.

We feel we play a very unique space in this wild, complex advertising ecosystem, marketing ecosystem, that no one else can really compete on. And so we want to help people achieve their goals. Listen, if we can’t help achieve your goals, I’m happy to tell you that because I want to make sure you achieve your goals because in the long run, that’s doing the right thing for you and for me. And so I want to make sure that we have a highly productive conversation.

Bennie

Well, I’m going to ask you this last question. What inspires you?

Tusar 

Yeah. What is, you know, well, a lot of different things. I would say, that’s a great question. So I would say, what inspires me from a work perspective? You know, well, let’s start on the personal side. So I’ll make it personal for a second. I look at a seven and four year old about to be eight and five. And I will say my five year old daughter is five going on 15 right now. So that’s a whole different thing. Yeah.

Bennie 

Yes, I know that experience, yes.

Tusar 

Yeah, yeah. So if you have any advice, I would totally take that.

Bennie 

I have advice, but as I tell my team all the time, it’s not the noun that matters, it’s the adjective. I don’t know if it’s good advice.

Tusar 

Yeah, exactly. That’s a good point. But I’m inspired because I want to make sure we leave a better world for them. And, you know, in these times when we, you we hear we’re in a society right now, I think where we have a lot of, you know, ups and downs every single day. And I just want to make sure, you know, for the long term, how do we make sure we think about a more productive, better society for kids is something that inspires me. And I want to make sure we can produce.

On the work side, what inspires me is really, I’ve been talking about this whole time, which is around how are we, you know, I believe strongly in the power of partnerships. It’s something I’ve always believed in. And when I talked about that customer obsessed and customer focused thing, I don’t view it as a sale to a customer. I view it as a partnership. How can we help each other achieve our mutual goals? And it doesn’t have to be in conflict with each other. It has to be around helping achieve goals together. and that’s everything that we’re thinking about within my team. How do we use the data we have to help build out the best solutions that can help our customers and help The New York Times to reach the consumers? There’s a reason we don’t have 80 ads every time you read an article, right? We are very specific about making sure the consumer experience first and foremost is best because we feel that provides the best results for the marketers when they’re trying to hit that unique audience that we’re. And so I think about that a lot and how we can make sure that we continue to do that.

Bennie 

So, do you think your kids understand what you do at The New York Times?

Tusar

You know, I think my son who’s about to be eight understands a little more. I will say, what’s funny is my wife and I both work in the industry, right? And so they definitely have a little bit of marketing within them. So they actually, my son from a very early age always noticed logos. He always, you can saw FedEx or UPS, he saw the arrow within the FedEx, always noticed it. Now they’re like, every time they see The New York Times, my son’s been very big into reading, he says, New York Times bestseller. They’re always yelling out, New York Times, New York Times.

I think they understand I work at this place called The New York Times. Whether they actually understand that, I don’t know if they know exactly what I’m doing and connecting marketers with consumers and advertising. I’m not entirely sure.

Bennie

It was a fun question because I’ve often had the discussion and commiserated with my fellow marketers about our families not understanding what we do, like trying to explain to our parents what we do and everything else. But it’s just kind of fun. Even though your kids are younger, I was like, you know, let’s ask the question. Do the kids get, what is dad doing out here?

Tusar 

Yeah. And then when they see that I’m like going to some like I’m going to London or I’m going to another place, they’re like, why are you always on the road? Like what’s going on?

Bennie 

What’s going on? But you know, you’re on the road doing good things. And I love the fact that we get to have this conversation about, you know, innovation starting and continuing in brands, right? It’s not that, you know, you don’t count the innovation by the number of decades or centuries, but you count it by the inspiration and the work that’s at hand. And I just thank you for joining us and being such a dynamic part of this conversation here for our episode of Marketing / And.

Tusar 

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, thank you for having me, this was great, really appreciate it.

Bennie

That this is it. I’m going to try to get some peace in my family around games and cooking, but you know, we’ll see what we can do. But you know, as, as we’ve had this episode, you know, gives us a chance to really explore the power of portfolio in our brand, the power of showing up in unexpected ways and continuing that connection through our brands and space. You know, you’re a great example of that. And I encourage everyone to check out all The New York Times properties. If you’re already not a part of them, now you know.

Tusar 

Let me know how it goes.

Bennie 

And I encourage you to check out the American Marketing Association. So even though we’re American in New York, we’re really the globe at heart. So thank you.