Why did they put advertisements on New York Times site right in the spot where you can usually see stock market numbers?

Big, it's called targeted marketing. I might also call it ubiquitous, but, for today, it's just targeted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_market

Hmm, interesting. They never usually put them there.

I don't keep track of them. Maybe they have a random program that pops up ads in different places on the NYT. I'm sure the advertisers, however, know who reads the NYT.