Here's How Publishers Are Opening Their Data Science Toolkits to Advertisers

As publishers grapple with how to best make use of the troves of audience data at their disposal, a growing number are handing brands the keys to in-house data and artificial intelligence tools that could change the way ads and sponsored content are sold. The New York Times, Group Nine Media and the Washington Post are among the media companies that have taken advantage of data science projects built for editorial purposes to give advertisers a clearer picture of who's consuming their content and how to best speak to them. Publishers hope programs like these might help them gain back ground from tech giants like Facebook and Google that dominate the ads industry through targeting precision. The Times debuted a unit earlier this year called nytDEMO that encompasses two new data-crunching tools. One, called "Project Feels," is meant to gauge and analyze readers' emotional reaction to articles and videos through a crowdsourced survey tool.