The New York Times has made an ad buy on Twitter for the phrase "Nate Silver" -- and everything that comes with it.
On Thursday, several Twitter users pointed out that a promoted tweet for the Times was popping up on some strange search results related to Silver -- the analyst behind the publication's hugely popular Fivethirtyeight blog who perfectly predicted the outcome of the election. (So far, at least. Florida's count is still unresolved.)
Some of the stranger search terms for which a promoted tweet showed up included the hashtag NateSilverFacts and the phrase Drunk Nate Silver.
I hope so. RT @agolis: Did the @nytimes buy the twitter search "Drunk Nate Silver"? twitter.com/agolis/status/…
— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) November 8, 2012
While it's nice to imagine that the Times had enough of a sense of humor to buy ads against these oddball phrases, a Twitter rep told Mashable that this appears to be a general ad buy against search results for Silver's full name.
Even so, it's just one more sign of how important Silver has become for the Times. On Monday, the day before the election, Silver's blog accounted for an astounding 20% of the Times' total traffic. Indeed, Silver found himself front and center in the election in the final days as he predicted there was a 90% chance President Obama would be re-elected. Conservatives criticized his method, but Silver ended up correctly predicting the national election outcomes for 49 states so far.
Since then, Silver's celebrity has exploded even more and the new ad buy shows the Times is eager to capitalize on it.