2 . Most forms of conventional advertising — print, radio and broadcast television — have been losing ground to online ads for years; only billboards, dating back to the 1800s, and TV ads are holding their own. Such out-of-home advertising, as it is known, is anticipated to__________ by 3.4% in 2024, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, which includes the LCD screens found in airports and shopping malls, by 16%. Such ads draw viewers’ attention from phones and cannot be skipped or __________, unlike ads online.

Billboard owners are also __________ the location data that are pouring off people’s smartphones. Information about their owners’ locations and online browsing gets collected and sold to media owners. They then use these data to work out when different groups — “business travellers”, say — walk by their ads. That__________ is added to insights into traffic, weather and other external data to produce highly relevant ads. DOOH __________ can deliver ads for coffee when it is cold and iced drinks when it is warm.

Such __________ works particularly well when it is combined with “programmatic” advertising methods, a term that describes the use of data to automate and improve ads. In the past year billboard owners such as Clear Channel and jcDecaux have __________ programmatic platforms which allow brands and media buyers to select, purchase and place ads in minutes, rather than days or weeks. It is said that outdoor ads will increasingly be bought like online ones, based on audience and views as well as__________.

That is possible because billboard owners claim to be able to __________ how well their ads are working, even though no “click-through” rates are involved. Data firms can tell advertisers how many people walk past individual advertisements at particular times of the day. Advertisers can estimate how many individuals __________ to an ad for a handbag then go on to visit a nearby shop (or website) and buy the product. Such metrics make outdoor ads more__________, automated and measurable, argues Michael Provenzano, co-founder of Vistar Media, an ad-tech firm in New York.

However, the outdoor-ad revolution is not free of __________ . The collection of mobile-phone data raises privacy concerns. And __________ of the online-ad business for being vague, and occasionally dishonest, may also be targeted at the DOOH business as it becomes bigger and more complex. The industry is ready to__________ such concerns, says Jean-Christophe Conti, chief executive of VIOOH, a media-buying platform. One of the__________ of following the online-ad pioneers, he notes, is learning from their mistakes.

4 . In this world of rapid changes, everything seems to be possible. There will eventually come a day when the New York Times stops _________ stories on paper. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. “Sometime in the future,” the paper’s publisher said back in 2010.

Nostalgia (怀旧)   as people are for ink on paper, there are plenty of reasons to _________   print. The basic facilities required to make a _________ newspaper—printing presses, delivery trucks — isn’t just expensive. Readers are keeping away from print anyway. And though print advertisement sales still _________ their online and mobile counterparts, income from print is still declining.

Cost may be high and circulation lower but rushing to _________   its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Petretti.

Petretti says the Times shouldn’t waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. “Figuring out a way to speed up that _________   would make sense for them,” he said, ‘‘but if you discontinue it, you’re going to have your most faithful customers really upset with you.”

Sometimes that’s well worth _________ anyway. Petretti gives the example of Netflix   _________   its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming (流媒体). “It was once seen as a(n) _________,” he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. “If I were in charge at the Times, I wouldn’t pick a year to__________ print,” Petretti said, “I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product, which has some advantage over a modern product, making it appealing for customers to keep it around.”

As a matter of fact, the most loyal customers would still get the product they __________. The idea goes, and they’d feel like that they were helping maintain the quality of something they believe in. “So if you’re __________   print, you could feel like that you were helping,” Peretti said. “Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional __________.” In other words, if you’re going to print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it, which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $500 a year — more than twice as much as a digital-only __________.

“It’s a really hard thing to do and it’s a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn’t have a legacy business,” Petretti remarked. “But we’re going to have questions like that. We’re doing things that don’t make sense when the market __________ and so does the world. In those situations, it’s better to be more aggressive than less aggressive.