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Articles by: "Clare Carr, Vice President of Marketing—Parse.ly"

Industry-Research

Curiouser and curiouser: Getting the story straight on Warren’s 70% statistic

I recently found myself going deep down an internet rabbit hole. 

Like anyone in charge of company communications, I get an alert any time our company is mentioned, linked to, or tweeted at on the internet. If you’re talking about Parse.ly, I want to know about it. 

Last week, I started getting alerts about articles involving Elizabeth Warren and a claim she made in March. In a blog post on Medium (which has since been updated), Warren stated: 

“Google and Facebook control websites that receive 70 percent of all internet traffic.”

The articles I was alerted to were tear downs of the statistic, claiming that she, in fact, didn’t have the right information. Which one was true? 

Down the rabbit hole

To figure this out, I dug in. Here’s how Warren’s team found this particular statistic, in reverse order: 

In late 2015, we released a blog post on external referral traffic stats from our network of media companies and publishers. The study looked at data from August through October of 2015. At the time, Facebook sent the most external traffic to our network (roughly 40% of traffic to sites came from Facebook). And Google search sent around 34% of traffic. This data excludes traffic that cannot be identified, including “dark” or “direct” traffic from email, SMS, private messaging apps, and other sources that strip referral information. We also exclude traffic from within the sites, known as “recirculation” or internal linking. 

Most people in the media industry now know this data and this storyline. However, Facebook no longer accounts for the most external traffic to media sites. Google again came to dominate referrals once Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm in late 2017/early 2018. This caused some massive upheaval in the media industry along the way. 

In late 2017, a programmer and writer, Andre Staltz Medeiros, wrote a blog called “The web began dying in 2014, here’s how.”  In it, he cites a number of sources regarding internet traffic and trends. He included a link to our 2015 blog post and an image made from our data. It’s not the main focus of his post, but Medeiros mentions the tension between media and the two dominant tech giants, without diving too much into the particulars. 

A few days later, Newsweek published an article titled, “Who controls the internet? Facebook and Google Dominance could cause the ‘Death of the web’.” Written by Anthony Cuthbertson, who was a staff writer for the publication at the time, the article mostly summarizes Medeiros’ blog post. (Cuthbertson is currently a Technology Correspondent for The Independent, according to LinkedIn.)

Cuthbertson writes in the Newsweek article: “Sites and services owned and operated by Facebook and Google—such as WhatsApp, YouTube and Instagram—now account for over 70 percent of all internet traffic, compared to a joint market share of around 50 percent in early 2014.” 

He also embeds a tweet by Medeiros (who also goes by simply “Staltz”) showing the data from the 2015 Parse.ly blog post. 

It’s slightly unclear which specific data point Cuthbertson meant to refer to in his quote. If it was meant to refer to the Parse.ly data, at a minimum it’s inaccurate, as our data separates Facebook traffic from Instagram. And WhatsApp traffic can’t be tracked through referrals (it would appear as “direct” or “dark” traffic.) 

Then, in March of 2019, Warren’s team posted the Medium blog post. It links the “70” in the statement “Google and Facebook control websites that receive 70 percent of all internet traffic” to the Newsweek article. (The updated text has more accurately changed to “70 percent of all Internet referral traffic.”) 

She also used this statistic in ads she ran on Facebook: 

So, to summarize: Warren’s statistic links to a Newsweek article, that references a blog post that talks about multiple sources of data including ours, that links to our blog post which includes data from 2015. Phew. 

Through the looking glass

Politicians and movements use stories and storytelling supported by data to promote their policies. However, this is a case study for just how difficult it can be for even the wonkiest policy maker to understand the minutiae of an industry that changes so quickly. 

In fact, when used correctly, our data still supports the argument that Google and Facebook account for an extremely outsized amount of traffic to media and content. As of this writing (10/11/19), roughly 82.5% of identifiable, external traffic referrals to media sites, arguably where most people get their information, are coming from those two sources.

Of course, in addition to traffic referrals, many people spend time directly on these sites getting news and information. Pew Research has also found that “More than half of U.S. adults get news from social media often or sometimes (55%), up from 47% in 2018.” They find Facebook and YouTube as the two top social networks that people find news on. 

With the change in Warren’s blog post to “70 percent of all Internet referral traffic,” the claim is certainly closer to accurate. However, we could still offer some clarification, perhaps to: “data suggests that over 70% of identifiable traffic to content and media sites comes through Facebook and Google Search.”  

For anyone making an argument to the American public, to governments, or even an internal business decision, this citation led us down a rabbit hole of “how accurate is our understanding of the statistics we use and the information we rely on?” It serves as a reminder to be clear about what data and sources you’re looking at, and of course, that Google and Facebook really do dominate a significant amount of our audience’s attention.

Industry-Research

What’s driving traffic? 5 trends based on platform data

This past month, we took an in-depth look at the referral platforms sending the most traffic to our network. We looked at the rate of their growth in 2018, the word count and device type for each, and the specific categories of content that attract readers, both in total volume and pageviews per post.

We’ve got loads of data, which you are welcome to dig into. But here are five key highlights from the 50+ graphs, 5000 words, two posts, and a PDF we created out of the data report we produced.

1. Consistent growth on Flipboard and SmartNews for 18+ months.

Non-social and non-search traffic referrers grew (in terms of percentage) the most in 2018, 21%, you can see the breakdown for each below.

Specifically, a lot of people didn’t realize that SmartNews and Flipboard have been growing for a while. Sure, their volumes still don’t warrant the attention that Facebook or Google gets. However, their steady growth numbers still surprised a lot of people who saw our data. For anyone that wants to learn more about these two platforms: Axios covered more about SmartNews, and Digiday looked at Flipboard’s user growth.   

Figuring out if that’s an audience that works, and how to work with them should at least be on the short list of considerations for audience teams in 2019.

2. Twitter referrals vs. content “about” Twitter

Twitter didn’t grow in terms of referrals in 2018, but does that mean it’s not important? Just because we see a platform go down in one metric doesn’t mean it should get written off. One example of why was this data stat: More views go to articles that include Twitter as a topic than views that are actually referred by Twitter.

The relationship between media and Twitter is clearly more complicated than a simple “how much traffic are we getting” question.  

3. Pinterest gets the highest percentage of its referrals to short (<200 word) posts.

SmartNews and Facebook also both send more shorter posts than is average on our network. LinkedIn sends the highest percentage of its traffic to long from (>1000 word posts), as does the Drudge Report.

This data itself doesn’t say much about whether people stay and read those long form pieces, but it does indicate what people want to share on those platforms and the mindset they’re in.

4. Desktop dropped, mobile and tablet increased:

Well, this one isn’t exactly a surprise, but it is worth noting that the trend hasn’t stopped.

From Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, per Recode:

“People, however, are still increasing the amount of time they spend online. U.S. adults spent 5.9 hours per day on digital media in 2017, up from 5.6 hours the year before. Some 3.3 of those hours were spent on mobile, which is responsible for overall growth in digital media consumption.”

Speaking of mobile, AMP is everywhere.

  1. 44% of mobile referrals from Flipboard are on are AMP. As are…
  2. 50% of mobile referrals from Google Search
  3. 89% of mobile referrals from Google News
  4. 39% of mobile referrals from LinkedIn
  5. 19% of mobile referrals from Pinterest,
  6. 54% of mobile referrals from SmartNews,
  7. AND finally, 48% of mobile referrals from Twitter. 
The full report on these referral data trends and more can be found on the Parse.ly blog.
Perspectives

5 ways non-traditional publishers connect with audiences

The digital media industry is not exactly heading into 2019 with unbridled optimism. However, with great challenge comes a sense of clarity and focus. And we have to hope that it’s finally registered that building a media company on Facebook traffic alone won’t sustain another year. An actual connection with the audience will make or break media companies going forward. As Brian Morrissey from Digiday put it: “Among the biggest lies publishers have told in the past few years, “We don’t buy traffic” ranks rather high.” Without a doubt, consumer engagement needs to top publisher strategies for 2019. 

Where to look for inspiration? A whole crop of brand publishers—admittedly free from the constraints of CPMs and programmatic ad-tech headaches (often with ex-journalists at the helm)—find ways to focus on building impressive audiences who contribute to revenue, without subscriptions. Imagine such a world! Maybe the traditional publishing world can learn something from these marketers (and one pretty radical publisher) when it comes to connecting with an audience.

Here are five big ideas to focus on in 2019:

1. Harvard: Get specific about your intended audiences—plural.

Resist the impulse to paint with a broad brush.

“When it comes to targeting, we start by asking that question upfront—Who’s the primary audience and the secondary audience?” said Mike Petroff, Director of Content Strategy at Harvard University. “The audience affects what we’re writing and how we’re evaluating and measuring. If the content is not hitting the right audience, it’s not successful.”

Petroff also distinguishes between audiences for specific channels. “With The Daily Gazette newsletter, we know the audience, we can understand the type of news a student needs vs. alumni or staff,” Petroff said. By understanding the nuances of the newsletter audience and their behavior, Petroff’s team can better serve all their readers. “We’re able to say, ‘Wow, this story really resonated with this audience but not at all with other audiences.’ We can give that info to certain editors about intent and what they can learn for future stories.”

2. Billy Penn: Ask your audience questions and listen to their feedback.

Okay, Spirited Media is clearly a publisher through and through. However,  they’ve taken such a radical approach to local news, that their advice gets included in this list. Data and market research are important for understanding audience behavior, but so is getting feedback directly from real people.

Danya Henninger, Editor at Philadelphia local news site Billy Penn, wondered if she should change the structure of their daily newsletter. “Our sister websites, in Denver (Denverite) and in Pittsburgh (The Incline)—they both start their newsletters with a personal note and then get to the news,” Henninger said.

Should Billy Penn follow suit? She brought the question to her readers: “At one point I asked, in our morning newsletter. I said, ‘Hey, how about if we do this note up here.’ And got several replies, ‘Please don’t do that.’” Henninger learned that her readers valued the format of the newsletter as it was, a brief recap of their news for the day.

3. Delta Sky: Create and empower quality content.

It pains me that this advice still needs to be shared but even in 2018. But let’s face it, quality isn’t something we can take for granted when it comes to content.

We asked Sarah Elbert, editor-in-chief at Delta Sky magazine, what constitutes quality. She replied, “Stories that don’t underestimate their readers.” And it’s working for her team: Sky’s readership among 22- to 44-year-olds has grown 32% in the past year and they’ve found that people are spending more time with the magazine.

Specifically, “it’s about finding the most alluring places to visit and bringing new elements of these destinations to life—whether it’s an adventure angle in Iceland or an urban tour of Seoul. And finding people who are just doing really cool, innovative things.” More generally, quality content includes the “kinds of stories that make the reader want to find out more. It’s about stoking their curiosity and engagement with the world.”

Creating stories that don’t underestimate readers also means trusting your writers. As Elbert said, “We allow our writers to have their own voice and we don’t dumb-down the content.”

4. BarkBox: Create an environment that people want to be a part of.

“Our philosophy as a company has always been that we’re not the party promoters—we are the DJs at the party,” said Stacie Grissom, Head of Content at BarkBox. “We’re responsible for creating the atmosphere that makes customers want to participate in the peripheral conversations rooted around our product.”

“We try to create content that sticks to your bones a bit more than just social memes and social videos,” Grissom said. “Our goal for BarkBox is to create a really entertaining experience.”

To that end, not only does Grissom have writers and social media people on her team, she also has comedians. The Bark approach is a marriage of data-driven decision-making and sheer creativity. “We tend to pursue a lot of things by thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if?’”

5. eMarketer: Don’t make your content frustrating on mobile.

Mobile is driving growth in time spent with digital media, according to data from eMarketer. An audience-first content strategy should also connect users with content that meets their mindset across devices, including when they’re on their phones. Often, that mindset is killing time in small increments.

Nicole Perrin, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, noted that content creators need to be “respectful of the user’s attention when [they] only have five minutes to look at [their] phone.” Ensure that experiences aren’t interruptive on mobile devices.

“As a user, I often get very frustrated consuming content, whether it’s on desktop, laptop, or phone, by how interruptive the experience can be with advertising,” Perrin said. She also urged creators to be smart about recognizing subscribers across devices. Removing friction from the user experience whenever possible can help you deliver value to prospective users and current users alike.

Big ideas for 2019

To make it out of 2019, and beyond, business as usual will not be business as usual. Big bets will have to be placed, and bold moves will have to be made. Making sure you’re constantly exploring strategies and tactics that make an audience want to connect with you is the best way to go on the offense, instead of spending your time playing defense against a constantly shifting market.

Here’s to learning from unexpected sources and trying new things in the new year.

Industry-Research

Are mobile news aggregators on the rise as referral traffic sources?

Often top referrers to articles in our network include a mix of the usual suspects: Google search, Google News, Facebook, Twitter, Flipboard, Drudge Report. But one day at the beginning of October I was looking at a story in Currents and noticed another referrer in the mix: SmartNews.

SmartNews is an app that aggregates and serves “impartial, trending and trustworthy” news through machine learning algorithms. And for the story I was looking at, about the FDA and e-cigarettes, SmartNews was the second highest external traffic referrer, right after Google Search.

Then later this month, another colleague was keeping up with the Mega Millions lottery news (she didn’t win) and noticed another unusual referring domain: discover.google.com. We’ve written about trends in non-search Google referrers before, including non-search AMP traffic and Google Quick Search Box, but this was a whole other domain.

We couldn’t help but wonder what  was going on with these mobile referrers, and how they affecting were traffic to publishers. I took a closer look at the traffic trends to find out.

SmartNews revs up traffic 

My colleague who owns an Android phone said she’s used to seeing SmartNews alerts pop up.

However, she didn’t realize how many people had the app pre-installed on their devices or were opting in to the same experience.

SmartNews has been growing as a referrer, with VentureBeat reporting 200% growth year-over-year in the U.S. and 10 million monthly active users. Looking at page views to articles since April, it’s clear that there’s an uptick.

The highest peak in referral traffic from SmartNews happened this month. In fact, SmartNews has even edged its way into the top fifteen overall referrers so far in October. Though it drove under 1% of traffic, SmartNews ranked 11th, right behind Yahoo and ahead of Apple News.

The Percentage of all network views referred from October 1 – October 26, 2018.

The top stories  with traffic from SmartNews this month are about Law, Government, and Politics, News, Business, Health & Fitness, and Science.

Google Discover makes an appearance

Though the referring domain discover.google.com didn’t make it into the top overall traffic sources in October, it appeared seemingly out-of-the blue. Traffic from the referrer to our network begins suddenly on October 18.

So where exactly is this mysterious traffic coming from? Turns out it’s coming from the artist formerly known as Google Feed. In September, Google Feed rebranded as Google Discover.

Google reports that more than 800 million people use Discover every day. From Google’s blog: “Think of it as your new mobile homepage where you can not only search, but also discover useful, relevant information and inspiration from across the web for the topics you care about most.”

So far according to our nine days of network data, the information Google Discover users cared about most included these top five categories: Law, Government, and Politics, Technology & Computing, Business, Sports, and Science.

News aggregators appeal to a younger demographic

Given that U.S. adults are spending an average of 3 hours, 25 minutes a day on mobile devices in 2018, according to eMarketer, it may be no surprise that more and more readers are finding news through mobile news aggregators.

In their 2018 digital news report, Reuters Institute found that over half of respondents got news through interfaces that use ranking algorithms, including search, social media, and news aggregators. The same amount of respondents (6%) treated email, mobile alerts, and news aggregators as their respective main gateways to news.

What does this mean for publishers? It might be worthwhile to keep your eye on growing news aggregator referrers, especially if you’re trying to reach a younger demographic. According to Reuters, aggregators are most popular among 25 – 34 year olds and 18 – 24 year olds. Compare that to email and direct access, which are most popular among 45 – 54 year olds and people aged 55+.

Have you noticed any mobile referrers take off lately? Let us know—we’re keeping our eyes peeled.

Industry-Research

Another content “recommendation” source from Google takes off

Whenever we see a chart like this:
our analysts quickly start asking questions. Big spikes usually mean some sort of change, new product, or initiative at at platform that affects journalists and media companies. The problem is, usually the platforms don’t bother to mention it to you.

In this case, the data led us to something called Google Quick Search Box. As our Senior Audience Development Solutions Manager, Kelsey Arendt, explains: “GQSB was previously understood to be only organic search from the search bar widget on mobile devices, but now it’s a blend of search box and recommended content.”

The referrer now sends traffic from:

  • “View Related Pages.” This appears in a Google webview—not Chrome—on both AMP and non-AMP pages.
  • “Check out your feed” at the bottom of search inputs. This takes you to “interest-based” content cards.
  • Left-of-home swipe cards. (Note: These cards aren’t related to the googleapis referrer, and we’ve clarified that in this post.)

And so another Google initiative could be affecting how your content gets shown to audiences. Though there might be benefits this time around.

Considering the effect of personalization on readership

Beyond the fact that we see (again) the power of platforms to influence how audiences find premium content, the data also shows what an impact personalization of content can have.

According to Parse.ly data, internally referred traffic sends more views to articles than all of social media. This includes home and sections pages, as well as any recirculating traffic sent from article to article. Increasing these views by showing even better personalized articles has huge potential.

So when it comes to content, what kind of personalization works, and how do you test it?

Adapting personalization to your audience

Personalization can mean a lot of things when it comes to tactical execution. Does it mean that each reader sees content uniquely based on their reading history? Or maybe based on the section or article the user is seeing that moment?

There isn’t a one-size-fits all solution for this, and media companies should be testing and adapting their personalization strategies for their audiences. Much like technology developers test user experience, this should not be a static choice that is made once for all audiences.

Last year, Setareh Baig, a then graduate school intern from NYU’s Studio 20 program, tested how this would work in practice. She interviewed the product teams at The New Yorker and The Intercept and did user testing.

Setareh found that first-time visitors to these sites were most interested in reading more posts when they knew these articles had been the most shared. From her research:

“These readers are very interested in what’s being shared. They valued personalization tailored to stories that are relevant in conversations with peers. They want news stories that other people want to know about and take proactive action on. Whereas time on page is passive, they want to be given stories that other people were inspired and driven to do something about.”   

Since The New Yorker team cares deeply about subscribers as well, other user tests could be implemented, testing whether returning visitors had the same behavior, or whether they were more likely to want to read a story they knew other subscribers had spent time with.

We’re keeping our eye on the trends and traffic that Google sends publishers’ way. We’re also encouraged to see publishers take what works and adapt to their own readers. Here’s to seeing more spikes of interested readers in the future.

Perspectives

Do more with less: 3 opportunities using more relevant data

Every day we’re reminded about the limited resources facing our industry, from the time people have to produce stories to the lack of insights we have about decisions made at the big platforms. There’s an irony then that it feels like there’s more data available to us than ever before. Yet many people still aren’t sure how to make the most of it.

Trying to improve business models, audiences, or content simply by adding more data doesn’t guarantee any success. Now, more than ever, the answer is finding the most relevant data—and making sure we’re uncovering all the available opportunities the data we have can provide.

Historically, some of this data has been hard to get to. The major technology platforms see it as theirs to wield. So, without major undertaking, it can be hard to piece the different types of data that audiences coming from Facebook, Google, your own editorial efforts, and untrackable sources actually show.

The Parse.ly data team, using Currents, looked at a recent major news story, immigration, as an example, to uncover opportunities for media companies that might have been missed in other data sources.

Finding the under-covered angle of the story

When Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy separated children from parents, #KeepFamiliesTogether picked up steam on social media. But how did that translate to attention for the articles publishers wrote, and what did people want to know more about?

Over the course of one week, June 18 – June 25, there were 590 articles about immigration getting attention in our network. And that attention was vast: 16 million views.

Data from Currents, June 18 – June 25

So many articles means the topic was well covered, right? Not necessarily. Take the topic of “asylum seekers” for example.

Only 20% of these stories were related to asylum seekers. However, they received over 30% of the attention. High traffic per story suggests this angle was potentially under-covered and under-promoted.

Understand the differences between referral types

So where exactly were people finding stories about immigration? The biggest source of traffic was social media, which drove one-third of traffic to immigration stories. Given how much the media industry talks about Facebook, this may not seem surprising. But this is actually about double the typical traffic the network sends to any given story. It also bucks the trend of Google as the dominant source of traffic.

Other important ways readers learned about this issue? Directly from news sites, no platforms needed. About one-quarter of the overall traffic to immigration articles was from editorial promotion: site homepages, section pages, and links within articles.

For the specific topic of asylum seekers, we looked at where else people talked about this topic:

Data from Currents, June 18 – June 25

Twitter sent almost as much traffic as Google to stories about this topic. And Instagram shows as a significant referral – one of the more surprising results of this data to me.  With data about what’s relevant to readers right now, and where, teams can be more pointed in how they spend precious resources, including their time.

Narrow in on what topics matter to different localities

Where people are paying attention to stories doesn’t just apply to places on the internet—search, social, etc. Readers’ physical locations impact attention, too.

For stories about immigration, attention wasn’t at the same level across the entire country. Certain areas, including parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, over-indexed, represented by darker colors on the maps below.

Geographic data can also inform where a story gets distributed. If you’re pushing your immigration story out on Facebook and Instagram, geo-target cities or states where attention, and therefore interest, is already high. Or if your newsroom is part of a network that spans multiple regions, this information can help guide syndication strategy.

Don’t get more data. Get relevant data

It would be amazing if organizations had more of everything: more staff, more resources, more time, more universally accessible sources of data and information. But the reality is you have to pick and choose your data wisely. You need to use sources that can find opportunities for your site, instead of accessing the same list or information that everyone else uses can make the most of that data.

In the absence of time and resources, focus on making sure you have the right data at your fingertips. Pay attention to the data that’s relevant: what audiences care about right now, where they’re finding that information, what stories are related, and where the gaps are.

Industry-Research | Perspectives | Revenue

3 questions to ask your data when evaluating a paywall

While the digital publishing world seems enamored with direct reader revenue lately, here’s a quick reminder that it is difficult to ask people to pay for something that used to be free. And there are a lot of decisions that go into setting up a successful program such as determining the threshold for a free article limit, deciding on a call-to-action, and identifying the right people at the right time.

We wanted to understand the existing subscription model landscape, so we analyzed 1,870 domains in the Parse.ly network. Just under one third (29%) use some type of paywall. The majority of those use some type of membership paywall or a metered/partial paywall. And barely 2% of our entire network deploy a full paywall.

If you’re considering moving from that 71% group into the reader revenue group, you probably have a number of questions, starting with: is this the right move?  Other big things to consider include: Who should be seeing your call to action? And what’s the ideal “free article” limit?

Parse.ly’s Head of Audience Development Solutions, Kelsey Arendt, encourages clients to find the answers in data for these three questions when evaluating which paywall method makes the most sense for your site.

What subset of my audience are “super-users”?

Super-users are your most consistent and reliable audience. They appreciate your content and they trust you. That makes the valuable as a target group for a paywall call-to-action and as an exclusive audience for premium advertising partners or for VIP offers.

Selecting the right paywall method hinges on an understanding of audience loyalty distribution. To determine whether you have a sufficiently-monetizable subset of loyal superusers, ask yourself:

  • How often do my visitors read?
  • How engaged are they each time they visit?

Reader frequency and article engagement help you decide what the cut-off for your call-to-action to subscribe should be, whether it’s a paywall after five free articles or 10.

To illustrate this, we took a look at a sample of aggregated data from the Parse.ly network. Seventy percent of the audience to these sites visit a single website four times or less per month. They also read less than 10 articles per month. Said another way, those readers would not be affected at all if a site implemented a metered-paywall with a limit of 10 free articles a month.

The promising opportunity lies with the other 30%. Take one of the smallest groups, the 3% of the audience who visit a single website nine times per month or more. This loyal group can, and should, be identified if they are the ones who are most likely to convert into subscribers.

Imagine a moment when you walk into your favorite store, the one you go to all the time and where they know you. If someone tells you that they have something special for you, you tend to trust them and consider their offer.  Audiences that have made it to that “circle of trust” for your site, might be more receptive to the idea of a paid membership model, thus increasing your chance of converting them.

What content belongs behind a paywall?

Another way of asking this question is: What content resonates with your super-users? To find out, consider the sections or topics your most loyal audience already loves.  Figure out what your most loyal audiences pay the most attention to and consider making one of your premium offerings.

Measuring total engaged time reveals the content that resonates the most with readers. Total engaged minutes encompasses both breadth and depth. The team at Slate focuses on engaged time for exactly this reason.

Am I adding value for my readers?

While you have to examine the data behind the potential audience and what they’re most interested in, you should also ask yourself what else you can offer them.

The reason why readers subscribe will always come down to your unique voice and your brand. But as much as people like your content, they also value their time. So, any moment with them must either add value to their life or come at the right time.

There are so many ways to add value to a membership or subscription model. A few that have been explored: exclusive benefits, an ad-free experience, discounted events, direct input into editorial, or VIP access. But don’t limit yourself to what you’ve seen. Maybe your audience would sign up in exchange for a book of coupons to local stores or for an exclusive app download that made them more efficient with their time.

Ask not what your readers can do for you—ask what you can do for your readers.

Paywalls: Not always the perfect solution

At the end of the day, if you want your readers to pay attention to your work, you need to pay attention to their needs and interests. Data can help you understand whether a subscription model might work, and how to get your subscription offer in front of the right people at the right time.

And what if the data shows that paywalls don’t make sense? Paywalls, meters, and memberships are just a few methods of monetization. Even if you can successfully monetize that 3% of super-users, you’ll still need to explore other revenue options.

The other 97% of your audience can still help you generate other types of revenue, like native advertising, merchandise, or advertising. And of course, data can help you find opportunities for those options too.

Research

73% of site visitors get there via mobile. Here’s your guided tour through the mobile landscape.

There’s a good chance that you have a cell phone within arm’s reach right now, maybe in a pocket, next to you on your desk, or even in your hand as you read this post.

Even so, when you imagine a reader interacting with your site, do you tend to picture a person browsing on a laptop or do you see a commuter reading on her phone? Getting a clearer picture of how readers discover content via devices starts with checking in with the data.

As recently as 2013, peak daily mobile usage only accounted for 20% of traffic. Parse.ly network data shows that on average over 65% of traffic to publisher and brand sites in 2017 was “pure mobile.” Now, at the beginning of 2018, mobile and tablets drive 73% of traffic to our network.

With the mobile audience growing faster and bigger than ever before, it’s essential to understand the media habits unique to those readers. Here’s what the data suggests about people’s habits when it comes to when, where, and why we’re on our phones.

When: Desktop during workdays, mobile all the time

The times that people are more likely to browse on mobile vs. desktop vary. Desktop still has a weekday cadence (following peoples’ work schedules), whereas mobile is “all day every day,” including some morning and night-time peaks. People also tend to use tablets on weekends.

We also consistently see a drop-off in desktop traffic between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm in every local timezone in the U.S.. Of course, this makes sense because many people head home from work around 5:00 pm.

Desktop ended 2017 at only 25% of total traffic across all our publishers, and kicked off 2018 at only 23% of traffic. This does vary quite a bit on a publisher-by-publisher basis. For example, some international publishers are almost all mobile traffic, and some subscription or workday reads lean desktop. However, overall, it’s a safe bet that mobile and tablet have firmly overtaken desktop for “casual” news reading.

Where: Five big movers of mobile traffic in 2017

When you break down the services or referrers that drove mobile growth in 2017, five bigs ones stand out. People are discovering content on mobile devices via:

1. Plain old Google Search

Google experimented a lot with highlighting premium publishers in their mobile search experiences, and unifying Google Search with Google News, which drove more traffic back to publishers’ sites.

Traffic from Google AMP increased by 87% in 2017. Not only that, but making AMP available to other platforms contributed to mobile growth. AMP drove 3% of visitors to our network by way of non-Google platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

2. Google’s non-search connected services

These services include Google Now and Google Play Newsstand, mostly on Android. Though these services did not grow the most out of the five listed here, the absolute number of visits delivered was substantial, and contributed to Google overtaking Facebook as a primary source of traffic. AMP and Android platform dominance propelled Google’s shift from news search to content discovery.

3. Flipboard

Flipboard was the big independent (read: not Google or Facebook) traffic source growth story of 2017. Especially in the latter half of the year, as they launched their formal partnerships with major publishers, Flipboard grew over 300% over the year in mobile.

4. Twitter

Twitter and Flipboard are now sending similar levels of mobile visits to publisher sites. Twitter has reinvested in news partnerships, mobile speed, and their mobile apps. Notable changes to the app include the shift to the 280 character limit, AMP embeds, and algorithm changes.

5. Instagram

Instagram also cracked our top-10 list for traffic sources overall for publishers, driven by the platform’s move this year to allow linking to external web-based content from Instagram stories. With the copycat stories feature, Instagram ultimately took the wind out of Snapchat’s sails.

Why: We feel the need, the need for speed on mobile

Speed heavily factors into why people are browsing the way they do on mobile.

With people using their phones everywhere—in transit, waiting in line, you name it—it’s likely that they’ll be off wifi and on a network. The speedier the network connection, the better the experience. This resonates with a finding from a recent Pew Research survey: half of Americans say an unlimited cell data plan would help them get information to make decisions.

People also trust content that loads quickly, according to the  American Press Institute:

“A majority of digital news consumers report it is very important to them that ads not interfere with the news (63 percent); that the site or app loads fast (63 percent); that the content works well on their mobile phones (60 percent).” — American Press Institute

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flipboard, and others were right, we think, to focus so aggressively on mobile page speed improvements. For example, Google recently re-emphasized the fact that their search algorithms would penalize slow sites on mobile.

It’s worth noting that just because people want content to load quickly, that doesn’t mean they want to move on from content quickly. Long-form articles get more than twice the engaged time of short-form articles on cellphones, according to a 2016 study from Pew Research.

Keeping up with the pace of mobile growth

With the fast growth of mobile, and especially now that Facebook referrals are declining, building direct mobile channels allows publishers to meet readers where they are.

People still spend a lot of time checking email, and having a “daily read” newsletter is a great way to drive traffic to your mobile site, without requiring a native iOS or Android app strategy. According to a study by Campaign Monitor, 41% of email opens happen on mobile devices, exceeding the amount of opens on both desktop and tablets. If you can’t build your own app, integrate your content into users’ habitual engagement with their email app.

However, it’s also important to keep in mind that readers are less likely to click through on mobile. Campaign Monitor reports, “As more people consume email on mobile devices, the standard for compelling content is higher than ever.”

As mobile grows, checking back in with the data helps ensure that you’re connecting with readers when and where they are on mobile, and delivering content that resonates with them.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

AMP referrals to publishers are increasing, and not just from Google

Though sometimes it seems like we’ve been talking about it forever, Facebook became a leading referrer to publishing websites only in mid-2015, according to Parse.ly data. Around that same time, other news broke that was poised to impact traffic drivers: Google officially launched AMP.

Today, the two news stories again converge. We’ve seen Google take the “referral king” crown back, with Google accounting for 44% of traffic to our network, and 12% of external traffic to media sites specifically coming from Google referrals AMP pages.

We can thank supply and demand for some of this. According to Google, there have been more than four billion AMP pages published and over 25 million domains creating AMP pages. Google purports that AMP brings benefits that can explain the rise in referrals. The web giant commissioned a study that shows that “AMP leads to a 10% increase in website traffic with a 2x increase in time spent on page. For e-commerce websites using AMP, the study also found a 20% increase in sales conversions compared to non-AMP pages.”

While these numbers point to a fairly big success for AMP so far, multiple causes likely contribute to the big picture numbers. Some of this shift to of referral traffic back to Google, AMP or otherwise, may be result of user preference for broader sources of information. Digital Content Next’s recent research showed that consumers have low levels of trust for news they get via social media, which could be a contributing factor. And perhaps the decline in Facebook as a primary driver of publisher traffic reflects Facebook’s desire to keep people in their app to try get a grip on the shifting tide of awakened media consumers.

However, it definitely shows the success of Google’s ability to sell AMP as a non-proprietary solution, versus Facebook Instant Articles. In short, development work done for AMP isn’t constrained to one audience or platform. Our research on referral traffic to publisher websites shows that the additional benefits may be mounting.

Adoption of AMP, it seems, has not just been embraced in Google searches but more broadly across the web. Over 3% of visitors to our publishing network visit through AMP off of Google, from sites like Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. For context, all of Twitter’s referrals to publishers’ websites only accounts for 2.5% of total external referral traffic.

Whatever the cause, for publishers still considering the adoption of third-party distribution channels, or considering their continued support in 2018, understanding these numbers for your site and for the industry should play a role in decision making. Audience acquisition, engagement, and retention through them becomes not just an editorial strategy, but a product development one as well.

Perspectives | Video

Pivoting to video: It’s not one size fits all

With more than one media company laying off staff to “pivot to video,” the move bears some scrutiny. Understandably, those in the “text” camp emphasize the power and speed that written content brings, while the other side sees dollar signs behind video advertisers. But these opposing storylines hide nuances that need to be considered, if you’re considering video at all.

First, the data. Yes, average time spent watching digital video is expected to keep growing and the prospect of television ad dollars ripe for the picking seems too good to not consider how digital sites can grab a piece of it. However, our research has also shown that video on media sites underperforms when it comes to content types: people spend, on average, 30% less with video posts than a non-video post.

Video is Not for Everyone

But all of that data ignores a crucial, but somewhat basic point: not all video is the same.

This summer, Parse.ly hosted a series of events in New York City asking publishers about this issue. Ryan Sager, Editorial Director of the Ladders, and Time Magazine, WSJ, and NYPost alum, took a stand against the pivot to video. He pointed to Facebook sharing inflated metrics and the uninspiring push for live video, but more broadly pointed out that the actual content of the videos people want to create matters. “What do people want to watch?” Sager asked the audience, “If you are a food brand, great. But if you are in a news space, it’s a much tougher sell.”

Even for publishers that fit into one of those spaces, like the home decor and DIY site Domino, the number show that video does better when paired with text. “Our video needs to come in tandem with content. There needs to also be text with it,” Tracy Cho, Executive Director of Marketing, Growth and Analytics at Domino told the audience.

The attendees agreed. We polled attendees and found 76% of them supported using a mix of content formats, while only 13% wanted to see a more sites pivot to video.

Video is Content Too

Some even questioned thinking about video in such a bifurcated way. “It feels foolish to categorize video as separate content,” said Andrew Littlefield, Managing Editor at Ceros. “If you examine your own habits, you don’t go on the internet and think, “Time to look at some videos,” or “Time to read some words.” It’s just all one hodgepodge.”

Sachin Kamdar, CEO of Parse.ly, emphasized that any company making a pivot to video out of desperation would face challenges unrelated to the format itself, including poor internal communication and a culture unaccustomed to producing this type of content. However, he also noted that the opportunity that video presents needs to be taken seriously in an industry struggling for monetization options. The intersection of consumer intention, market dynamics, the added incentives of the tech platforms, and the ability to monetize means that any company not considering what video could mean for their business out of sentimental value to the written word could be missing out.

So, what does make sense for publishers as the video conversation progresses? “Understand your audience and decide what products are going to best serve them, and potentially make you money,” Kamdar said. Melissa Gilkey, Vice President of Growth at Upworthy agreed, noting that when considering any choice that affected content that “data is a huge component of that. It’s a non-negotiable if you’re building a strategy.”

Industry-Research | Revenue

The data shows it: Article pageviews and their value don’t correlate

Advertisers know that not every view is created equal and that it’s important to understand your brand in context. It’s why ad tech companies created targeting options. It’s why content can be bought by topic. Are the companies creating content thinking about getting the most value out of their audiences in the same way?

To figure out if this is the case, we examined Parse.ly’s publisher data to see how much volume different topics produce. We broke this down by the number of articles written and the average pageviews per article. Then we compared that to how advertisers value different audience segments.

The Data: Audiences by Topic

Examining how people find different topics online revealed that the subject matter of an article has an impact on the likely source of traffic. For example, in a sample of one million articles in the Parse.ly network, Facebook brought in 87% of pageviews to lifestyle content. Google search accounted for 61% of readership to technology stories.

In addition to learning how people found the articles, we looked at how did each topic compared by scale and popularity. Articles that fell cleanly into the lifestyle or U.S. presidential politics categories received the most views, while articles about sports and entertainment were the most common by volume.

A couple of explanations about our methodology are worth noting. For this report, we selected articles that fell cleanly into one category. In other words, we selected articles where at least two thirds of the words were generated by a single topic. This left us with a subset of just over one million articles that we could cleanly assign to a single topic.

For example, imagine that most articles that are written as a mix of two or more topics. Those will be excluded from this analysis. It simply doesn’t make a clear conclusion to say that “mixed-topic articles with a lifestyle slant” tend to get more pageviews. However, we can confidently say that articles that are mostly about lifestyle tend to get more pageviews than articles mostly about business.

Other important data preparation decisions to note are that we included only English-language articles. We also excluded articles whose full text was fewer than 600 characters. (The complete methodology is detailed in the full report.)

Pageviews vs. Audience

The extremes are quite telling. An average article in the lifestyle category gets nine times the pageviews of an average article on business and finance. So, does this mean the lifestyle pageview will bring in nine times as much revenue?

In fact, in some cases, the opposite is true. Digiday recently reported that CNN leverages audience segments by vertical to optimize ad rates. Chris Herbert, CNN’s SVP of digital operations and strategy, explained: “CNN’s finance vertical, CNNMoney, for example, commands higher ad rates than the parent site does because of its upscale audience, which could justify spending more to drive audience to that property.”

So, the really interesting question is how a publisher can match monetization to the potential expected pageview or volume, regardless of scale.

For example, even if the advertising value of certain topics are lower, the high volume of certain content types opens up other monetary opportunities. Lifestyle publishers and Condé Nast brands such as Condé Nast Traveler and Allure are forging partnerships to create branded subscription boxes. Efforts like these allow them to take advantage of the large “top-of-funnel” audience to drive purchase conversions.

Opportunities in High Volume/ Low Pageviews

Our team was surprised that the average views for each sports article ranked so low among topics. Given that the high-volume content was comprised mostly of local and even high school sports means that the average view totals are much lower. This is particularly true when compared to the audience for stories about national leagues. It is also worth noting that a preponderance of extremely short stories—such as those on game stats, syndication or even automated sports reporting—contribute to the high volume.

Taken in aggregate though, readers generally engage well with sports topics. A previous study we did (based on different data, but also looking at topics) found that sites focused on sports had a median engaged time of 51 seconds per article. Thus, sports can offer a strong monetization opportunity beyond pageviews. Engaged and loyal audiences can be monetized more easily through subscriptions, live events, or membership models.

Bring back the Classifieds?

Job postings are an example of a topic with low article volume—the lowest, in fact, of all topics analyzed—and high pageviews per article. From our research, we learned that the majority of traffic to job postings comes from Google search, which drives 84.4% of referral traffic. Facebook drives 11.9% of traffic comes, while the rest comes from other sources. This kind of traffic breakdown makes sense in the context of pageviews. If readers are searching for very specific information, a small subset of articles could generate a high volume of pageviews.

The classifieds are unlikely to return to their status as a primary revenue driver. However, for any scenario where you have a high amount of traffic to a low amount of content, there is likely to be room for revenue growth.

Using Data to See the Full Picture

The data we used for this study identifies ways that audience data should be considered for revenue potential, especially for opportunities outside of traditional display advertising. However, to be fully acted on, audience data must be synced in a way, both culturally and technologically, that connects it to business and monetary objectives.

Industry-Research

3 Things standing in the way of engaged time metrics

The idea of the “Attention Economy” as a currency on the internet goes back to at least 1997. So, 20 years later, we should have this engaged time metric figured out, right?

From a technological perspective, we do. We can accurately measure the time a reader spends actively reading a page, versus measuring how long a browser tab was left open with a page. Ads can measure engagement or time spent viewing.

However, we need to separate the technical ability to measure engaged time from the adoption of the metric as a valuable evaluation construct. Has the reality on the ground changed when it comes to using time to understand an audience?

Adoption at an Individual Level

We attempted to answer this question by partnering with Digiday’s CUSTOM studio on a research survey. Based on responses of almost 300 members of the Digiday audience, engaged time has gained a great deal of traction with journalists and reporters.

Time-on-page (the broader term we used in the survey questions) ranked the highest for what people use to evaluate their own work.  If you interpret this chart another way, it indicates that 50% of people working in publishing see time spent with their audience a personal goal for their work.

However, we also asked about which metrics people were responsible for reporting back to their company. When asked this way, time-on-page dropped to the sixth position – out of nine total choices.

While individuals may understand and value time-on-page as a way to show that an audience cared about the work of a piece, organizations are still prizing pageviews, impressions, and social sharing.

The disconnect between these two sets of responses emphasizes the gap between how writers view their relationship with their audience and that relationship’s value to the business. If the writer’s goal is to engage the reader, but the business still makes money from impression numbers, how can those two align?

Barriers to Organizational Adoption

In addition to the data from the survey, the report revealed specific challenges that companies face in trying to adopt any new metric or goal. Here are three takeaways:

  • Inconsistent messaging from leadership. Though executives are usually not immersed in analytics every day, leadership still sets the tone for how employees view company success. According to one of participant in the research, inconsistent messages from management can make things more confusing: “It shifts with whoever is in charge. Some new person comes on and says, ‘This is our prime metric. This is what we’re shooting for.’ And then they go off and work somewhere else and someone else comes in.”
  • The right vs wrong metric mentality. Conversations need to stay away from “the right” metrics and lean more towards what success means. Employees want their work to be successful; focus on that first and then connect the metrics to how to get there.
  • A lack of expectations and benchmarking. With new metrics, you have to indentify the status quo in order to tell if something is performing better or worse than expected, or to show improvement over time. For metrics that aren’t as intuitively understandable as pageviews or visitors, what kind of benchmarking or expectations can be set?

Over the coming years, which organizations will ensure that the goals for their audience relationships, employees’ work and business models will align? And which will be able to adopt time as a measure of how their audience values the work they do? I suspect we’ll be able to tell soon enough.

The full research cited in this article can be found on Parse.ly’s website.

clarecarrClare Vice President of Marketing at Parse.ly, which partners with digital publishers to provide clear audience insights through an intuitive analytics platform. She writes and speaks about all the ways companies can use digital analytics to improve their operations and reach their audience goals. Prior to joining Parse.ly, Clare spent five years on the publishing side as the Director of Marketing and Online Operations at Greentech Media. Previous to that, she did digital marketing and business development at ThePoint.com, the precursor to Groupon, and Venus Zine. Originally from Ohio, she graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Environmental Sciences.

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