The New York Times

Written By Matthew Shadbolt

Director of Real Estate & Smarter Living Products, 2014-2017

In the 4 years I was general manager of the Real Estate section at The New York Times, audience more than tripled, and annual advertising revenue grew by over $2M. I was focused on growing audience, building search products and developing new revenue streams across multiple products, including desktop, mobile, print, social, video and emergent product platforms such as Virtual Reality. I defined the overall annual strategy, executed against quarterly OKRs, and set the product and marketing roadmaps.

Problems worked on:

  • How might we arrest the real estate section’s decline from the transition of classified advertising to digital marketing, and return the section’s revenue and audience to growth?

  • How might we rethink the search product suite from a user perspective and return both audience and revenue growth to the products by driving at user needs in collaboration with the newsroom?

  • How might we develop subscriber benefits that tap into time-gated, achievement-based activities our readers want in their lives, as a means of driving subscriber retention?

I worked closely on the importance of mission-oriented transparency and communications with the newsroom, sales, design, engineering (across 4 distributed teams in Finland, Romania, India and NYC), project management, analytics, marketing and product groups, and established effective audience development, internal communications and product management processes for the newsroom’s digital transformation. Over time my role also expanded to include subscriber bundle growth, new ventures and achievement-based retention initiatives alongside NYT Cooking, NYT Crosswords, and NYT Smarter Living as part of the NYT Beta team.

Achievements:

  • Tripled real estate section audience and grew advertising revenue by over $2 million (our team received The New York Times Publisher’s Award for operational excellence).

  • Redesigned and rebuilt the cross-platform suite of search and article products across desktop, mobile web and iOS, supported by innovative print, display and video house ad campaigns.

  • Developed effective audience development strategies for the newsroom in partnership with the analytics, editorial, design, social and search teams, resulting in more than tripling the section’s audience, and greatly improved the digital fitness of the editorial desks

  • Partnered closely with the sales team to develop a new suite of branded content opportunities, a new section of commercially-focused content, more effective opportunities for articles, and new collateral focused on solving advertiser needs, resulting in over $2 million in recurring annual revenue

  • Launched a redesigned editorial section including new columns, new online experience, new print design, overhauled search engine optimization and accompanying advertising campaign.

  • Created the first achievement-based subscriber benefit for Smarter Living with Programs.

  • Developed best-in-class internal communications and product process management for working with distributed development teams, and established strong precedents for how The New York Times builds products, removes technical debt, and optimizes for strategic growth.

Redesigned editorial section experience (2016 - Present)

Working closely with the user research group and targeting a new range of user needs, we relaunched the Real Estate section of The New York Times to include several new columns, a more dynamic visual experience, an updated print reader experience, and an overhauled digital section front and article discovery experience. This process worked closely with user interviews in defining specific pain points with the existing report, as well as identifying new spaces of opportunity to grow audience and revenue.

“Our readers look to us for industry news and guidance to help them navigate the often daunting New York real estate market whether they are buyers, renters, sellers, brokers, developers or simply interested in real estate,” said Vivian Toy, real estate editor, The New York Times. “With this redesign, we are excited to offer coverage that better serves the needs of our readers.”

Real estate section house advertising (2014-2016)

In support of revitalized visibility and audience development initiatives for the Real Estate section, we worked closely with the in-house marketing team to create and execute campaigns on a broad series of house ads over 4 years. These campaigns ranged from featuring specific columns and features within the section, to the search products and overall branding of the section. These ran in print, online and on mobile across all of The New York Times platforms.

New York Times Real Estate: ‘Find A Home’ Listings Search Product (2015 - 2020)

Eliminating years of technical, product and business debt, we rebuilt and relaunched The New York Times online service for finding homes for sale or rent. Working closely across distributed teams in Finland, Romania and India, we repositioned the service to focus on effectiveness (lead generation) for agents, in parallel with streamlining and simplifying the experience, making everything more visual, leveraging the existing New York Times technical infrastructure, replatforming everything, and adding new functionality such as neighborhood pricing guides, VR and video tours, slideshows, unique local neighborhood articles and information from The New York Times, and a new suite of native advertising opportunities.

Virtual Reality Home Tours Search Integration (2017)

April 3 2017: The New York Times Real Estate section today debuted virtual reality tours that will accompany listings found at NYTimes.com/findahome on desktop. The virtual reality tours are currently available to engage with on hundreds of listings.

Powered by the immersive technology of Matterport, the virtual reality tours will offer users a more interactive and unique experience that gives them a better understanding and feel for living in a particular home and neighborhood.

New York Times Real Estate: Mobile Web Redesign (2014 - 2020)

Real estate ‘Find A Home’ product house advertising campaign (2016)

Luxury-focused sub-section: The High End (2016 - Present)

Developed as a native advertising section, The High End was a place to consistently house all of The New York Times’ luxury real estate and affluent market coverage, in a way that clearly separated it from the more service-oriented / human interest pieces within the regular flow of the section’s journalism.

In addition to removing all technical debt around the existing section front infrastructure across the real estate category, we also built a new mortgage calculator, and a suite of hundreds of neighborhood pricing guides tied to the listings search experience to help users understand what was happening in the individual markets of New York.

Editorial Video Series: Block By Block (2015 - 2016)

Block by Block was a monthly video series to help both readers and people searching for real estate understand what it is like to live in a specific neighborhood. The series had accompanying editorial pieces and focused on the same question within local New York City neighborhoods each month: ‘What does it feel like to live there?’

Real estate section house advertising: Video marketing

Created in parallel with the section’s new suite of house advertising, this video was also used extensively by the sales team to communicate the value, reach and positioning of the section to existing and prospective advertisers.

New York Times Real Estate App for iPhone (2014 - 2020)

Find apartments for rent or for sale using our free New York Times Real Estate app for iPhone. Browse thousands of available homes for sale and organize your open house planning on the go.

In-depth home search tools designed to surface property details for the most desirable properties on the market, combined with frequently updated, award-winning New York Times Real Estate articles.

  • A brand new real estate news stream, which combines our favorite real estate articles with this week's most exciting properties.

  • Browse fully comprehensive property information in New York City, across the country and throughout the world.

  • Updated throughout the day, read the most current New York Times Real Estate news for free and share articles with friends.

Real estate iPhone app: House advertising campaign (2014)

New York Times Homepage Placements

Process & Product Development Workflow

“Matthew is a rare breath of fresh air in a real estate space for his high level expertise in technological and innovative strategies. I started as a competitive admirer of his when he was at the Corcoran Group. You knew when his former firm came out with something that was his brain child because it usually was heralded by several media outlets and talked about for weeks or months within the industry and featured at most all real estate and marketing/technology conferences.

That was why he has always been on my short list of "must sees" when I attend those conferences as a speaker or member of the audience. He is engaging and brutally honest. He spoke on topics as if he had a crystal ball or a DeLorean hidden somewhere to be able to know the business trends for the months and years to come.

His trailblazing work on building an enormous social footprint for the Corcoran Group was astounding. His accomplishments on foursquare was a case study in how to make that social medium work for you. His apps, content strategy and more were top notch. I have had the pleasure since Matthew has moved on to the NY Times to work closer with him and it has been a great learning experience as well as refreshing to be able to share ideas and thoughts with him more freely.

His advance knowledge of digital marketing, mobile, social, branding, teaching, public speaking, and shear salesmanship makes him an incredibly valuable asset in real estate and in most any industry. There is a reason why the largest media company in the world wanted him, he is different and in today's day different translates into revenue and a competitive advantage for your firm.”

Matthew J. Leone
Chief Marketing Officer at Terra Holdings - Brown Harris Stevens | Halstead

Matthew Shadbolt https://www.matthewshadbolt.com
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The Corcoran Group