NYTimes.com has been quietly rolling out a series of sub-sections this month, in hopes of attracting more B-to-B advertisers. By mid-September, new sub-sections will be added to the toolbars of both the Business and Technology channels, including Green Business and Enterprise Technology, respectively. Others will be added throughout the rest of the year. The rollout is also designed to blunt the challenge from WSJ, as the News Corp.-owned paper has expanded its coverage to go head-to-head with NYT on general news.

SEE ALSO: NYT Joins LinkedIn For Targeting Ads And Content

I spoke with NYTimes.com GM Vivian Schiller about the new sub-sections and how they fit in with its goals to have more targeted content and ads during an increasingly difficult time for the newspaper business. To support the expansion, Schiller says the paper has hired a handful of reporters from WSJ, Dow Jones, WaPo, The Economist, Financial Times, and others, with more to come.

—Targeting and privacy: The recent moves are part of a larger effort to better focus the site’s ad sales. Last month, NYTimes.com struck an alliance with LinkedIn on targeting news stories and ads at their respective readers and members. With the issue of ad targeting receiving intense scrutiny from lawmakers and privacy advocates, Schiller insists that personal data is sacrosanct. And since the program serves content to users as well as ads, Schiller believes the company has achieved the perfect balance. Schiller: “We are getting a level of detail for ad targeting purposes in order to target content as well. It’s along the lines of industry, job function, seniority, company size, gender and geography – none of which are personally identifiable. For example, if you have a user who is 65, and a woman and lives in Podunk, she’s probably in a very small group of readers. At that point, if the program might be able to personally target her, we throw the pool away.” More after the jump.