NEW YORK: The New York Times (NYT) has seen its global programmatic direct revenues double over the last three months, compared to the previous three, but the publisher and its clients still face some challenges in overseas markets.

According to Sara Badler, NYT’s Director of Programmatic Advertising, the company now runs hundreds of programmatic campaigns across Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

And she told Digiday that working with advertisers to create customised partnerships for programmatic, such as private marketplaces or guaranteed deals, is driving much of that growth.

“Each quarter, we’re modifying and changing our programmatic products to meet client demands,” she said. “We get that one size doesn’t fit all; everything is customised and specific to client needs.”

But while the guaranteed deal facility has the advantage of only sending ad impressions that match a buyer’s target audience – and the nature of programmatic is automated – negotiating terms with clients, especially in Europe, still requires face-to-face meetings to thrash out the details.

“It is a challenge. There are different budgets for different markets, and the German and French markets alone have different needs and types of buying,” Badler explained.

“The clients are very specific in how they buy, and a lot of the agency trading desks are looking for ways in which they can buy for multiple advertisers in one deal or doing more audience guaranteed deals.”

A number of long-established NYT clients in the US also want more information about how European consumer habits differ from their US counterparts.

“Is there a domain-specific loyalty from European audiences? And if so, what can we then infer about their demographics and what they read?” asked Jason Jutla, Senior Activation Director at Essence, the cosmetics brand.

“Do they have a political bias? Are those who read their articles via social [platforms] younger and a more politically activated audience?” he added. “That can help us narrow in on who their audience is and figure out how we can then try and influence them.”

However, for other companies, such as beauty products brand Coty, international programmatic campaigns work well with NYT because of the brand safety environment it offers.

Anthony Rhind, Chief Operating Officer at Beamly, Coty’s in-house digital ad agency, explained: “Working with them gives us the confidence needed to pioneer new programmatic ways of working with the most prestigious brands because we know where the ads will be, and that means we can push forward a better kind of innovation.”

Data sourced from Digiday; additional content by WARC staff