News media outlets are increasingly realizing that online readers are finding their websites’ content through people sharing stories on social media.Finding a way to sell advertising against those readers has been a challenge.The New York Times Co. unveiled Thursday a new social-media advertising program that attempts to address that quandary. Called Ricochet, the program lets marketers pick a select number of stories from Times Co. properties, such as the Times or Boston Globe, that are relevant to their social media audiences and create special links for sharing those stories. Anyone clicking on the social media links will see the marketer’s ads next to the stories for a specified period of time.To keep a dividing line between editorial and advertising, advertisers won’t be able to pick stories that mention their brands for at least a week after the stories have run.The program’s launch client is SAP, the business software company, which is picking Times stories about topics like big data and cloud computing. It will share these stories with its 127,000 Facebook friends, 47,000 Twitter followers, 113,000 LinkedIn followers and 2,000 YouTube followers. Anyone of those people clicking on the stories will see ads from a new SAP ad campaign that rolled out last week.

via New York Times Launches Social Media Ad Program – Digits – WSJ.