Today's economy is powered by software. Not just individual programs running in isolation, but multiple systems interconnecting and harmonizing data. It's why we can hail cabs from our smartphones or check the availability of a product from multiple stores from our desktops. At the heart of this is the application programming interface.

But what are APIs and how do they work? This Paid Post explores the critical role that APIs play in the our economy. Through a visual design that uses pneumatic tubes as a metaphor, this piece invites user engagement by inducing readers to scroll deeply, follow objects as they advance, and trigger more of the story to unfold. The piece visualizes the linkages created by APIs while three narratives explore how APIs work and how they’re used. The experience includes a game that allowed visitors to choose an industry and APIs to create companies and Tweet the results.

The Paid Post, which appeared on NYTimes.com, was the result of a six-month collaboration between CA Technologies and its media agency Swirl along with The New York Times' T Brand Studio. CA Tech, which offers an API management solution, wanted to cement its position as a thought-leader in the modern app economy by exploring the underlying technology, not its specific solutions.

Once the stories were developed, T Brand's editors, designers and developers worked closely on identifying a visual metaphor for the piece: pneumatic tubes, pipes and factory processes. After the client approved the concept and an animation prototype, the Studio development team used cutting-edge CSS technologies and several custom tools to build the final web layout, which perfectly scaled to any screen size. Animations were implemented using the GreenSock Animation Platform and ScrollMagic, with an approach that accounted for not only any screen size, but drove two different sets of artwork (desktop and mobile) with the same code. The project pushed the boundaries of web animation and layout, including browser-rendering performance, while allowing the artistic whimsy and dynamism of the underlying ideas to truly shine through.

The Paid Post rewarded users for interacting with the content, which benefited readers, their networks and the client. By the end of the campaign, it was viewed more than 200,000 times, with an average engagement time of nearly three minutes. The results of the game — in which players picked APIs and an industry to create a disruptive company — powered nearly 43,000 social referrals.

In addition, the experience was exported to a large, interactive video board at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Travelers, many of whom booked their tickets through APIs without knowing it, could explore the story of this critical technology while waiting for their flights.