It’s been nearly eight months since The New York Times purchased Wordle for at least $1 mill dollars. And while some people are scared that Wordle could end up behind a paywall, a new report indicates that Wordle may simply become an ad-supported game.
According to Axios, a 20-year decline in ad revenue has pushed The New York Times to develop a new ad strategy. The publication will soon integrate advertising in several non-news products. And it appears that games and cooking offer the highest potential for profit.
The NYT hasn’t announced which products will use advertisements, but Wordle is an obvious option. According to the NYT (via CNET), about 300,000 people play Wordle each day—a paywall could reduce the number of daily players, but ads could generate a ton of money without scaring people off.
When Axios asked about ads in Wordle, Alex Hardiman (NYT‘s head of product) explained the following—“We’re looking at games. We want to be very, very thoughtful about where and how we test new premium ad units on any game.” It’s a roundabout answer, but it’s still insightful.
If there’s any silver lining, it’s that the NYT doesn’t want “disruptive or annoying” ads. The publication could even develop new styles of advertisement to keep everything clean. (That said, “disruptive” ads are more profitable than easily-ignorable ads. Several people are involved in the NYT‘s new ad strategy, so you may want to take any promises with a grain of salt.)
And again, we don’t really know if ads are coming to Wordle. It seem that the NYT isn’t too sure either—all we can do is wait and see.
Source: Axios
