The Catalyst Code

It used to be when you opened the New York Times to pages 2 and 3 there were a couple of things you could be certain of. There’d be the lead news articles on international events, and there’d be a Tiffany’s ad on the right hand side of page 3. This was a great premium spot for Tiffany’s, at least if you believe lots of people opened up the paper.

Recently, the Times changed this–so now pages 2, 3, 4, and 5 are almost like a table of contents with short clips summarizing what’s in the paper and lots of ads. This seems like a really stupid design decision and it provides a good lesson on the do’s and don’t of catalyst company design. Like all advertising supported media, the The New York Times has a basic business model–get readers and advertisers on board its “platform” and promote “interactions” among the two groups. In practical terms that means delivering lots of eyeballs to advertisers. Design is a key aspect of that, as Dick Schmalensee and I explain in Catalyst Code. The classic example is the shopping mall with the up and down escalators on opposite sides of the two-level mall to promote foot traffic.

So when I look at the New York Times I wonder whether they really thought this through. Personally, I just skip over these pages which look like filler. And that’s too bad for my wife because my eye no longer lingers over the Tiffany’s ad. And too bad for Tiffany’s, too, which seems like its getting less valuable advertising space. What do you think? Bad catalyst design–or do you think the Times really did some market research that showed that these new pages would attract eyeballs?