Early last year, The New York Times was making its first big sales push since revving up its digital video strategy, and it locked down two large upfront deals with two tony advertisers.
One was Acura, which signed on for a full year. The other was Microsoft, which wanted a commitment closer to half a year. Both deals guaranteed these advertisers a "ton" of placement at the beginning of nytimes.com videos, according to a person familiar with the transactions, who said the deal with Acura was worth more than $1 million and Microsoft north of $500,000.
The good news was that the Times was finding customers for the sort of lucrative video buys that legacy outlets are eager to secure as they hustle to shore up digital revenues in the face of a spiraling print market.
The bad news was that by springtime, it had become apparent that the Times wouldn’t be able to deliver on both of these buys. There simply weren’t enough video streams to go around.