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Industry Research

Industry-Research

How publishers’ engagement on social platforms has evolved

These days, most digital publishers participate in some form of distributed content. Social strategy provides publishers with an opportunity to grow referrals, reach new audiences and engage readers. In the new report, “What we’ve learnt from three years of social data,” NewsWhip used its social analytics to identify what works best on social platforms by specifically looking at the best way toward long-term development.

Facebook

There are a variety of publishers that have high levels of monthly engagement on Facebook. These leaders of engagement are no longer restricted to organizations like Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post. In fact, Facebook engagement rates among publishers are now more evenly matched month to month. In 2014, the two of the Top 10 engagement sites, Buzzfeed and Huffington Post comprised 80% of all engagements compared to this year when the top two two sites, IndiaTimes.com and NBC comprise only 20% of all engagements.

There appear to be two publisher models that increasingly earn high levels of engagement on Facebook and other social platforms:

  • The first model showcases digital publishers who create volume with high monthly article counts. They have different sites customized for different audiences, be it by geographic areas or by interest groups. These publishers reach large digital audiences both nationally and internationally. They also have their own social media teams responsible for reaching and engaging audiences.
  • The second model showcases publishers with smaller article outputs but that receive higher average engagement rates. These sites often rely on writers or the specialty of their coverage to engage readers. Examples of this model are the New York Times and CNN.

Social media offers publishers, big and small, a way to directly touch hard to reach audiences.

Instagram

Instagram is a visual medium and a great attention grabber. Interestingly, eight in 10 of its users are from outside the U.S. A growing focus on Instagram is the video marketplace. Last March, the company increased its video length from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Compelling practices for videos postings include:

  1. Keeping videos short and to the point,
  2. Using on-screen captions for better storytelling,
  3. Utilizing the regular post caption capabilities to offer details about the story, and
  4. Using square format option instead of landscapes to appeal to mobile users.

Linkedin

Linkedin is a particularly good distribution channel for business sites. Recommendations that achieve more shares on Linkedin include those with descriptive headlines, relatable to others’ work life and posting to groups (which can also help grow followers).

Pinterest

Pinterest is a great vehicle for specialty publishers such as beauty and fashion, lifestyle, art, etc. The popular publishers here are often those that provide a blog and offer stories behind their pins. Interestingly, Pinterest is very appealing to publishers and brands because its users are noted having a higher intent-to-purchase, something that is attractive to publishers and brands alike.

Social media platforms offer publishers an opportunity to be seen by users outside the footprint of their site. It’s an opportunity for publishers to identify and supply readers with quality and trusted content. It’s critical for publishers and brands to think about the audience and produce content that is of interest to the platform’s users.

Industry-Research

App marketing shifts from installs to engagement

More apps mean more competition for users. This dynamic is driving user acquisition costs into the stratosphere. Companies have a choice: They can pay higher prices to acquire app users, or they can invest more effort in retaining high-value customers. Reams of recent research reveal a seismic shift to the latter as more app marketers sharpen their focus on approaches that emphasize “quality over quantity.”

It’s all about keeping users loyal. App marketers are beginning to understand that the customer-centric rules of online, digital and physical marketing also apply in the App Economy. For example, online a single-digit increase in retention can mean a double- or even triple-digit increase in profits. When it comes to marketing and monetizing apps, the advantages of identifying and inspiring quality users can be just as massive.

App Engagement

AppsFlyer is a platform for mobile attribution and marketing analytics whose tracking technology is found on 98% of the world’s mobile devices. The company regularly undertakes research to analyze best practices and trends. The State Of App Engagement, AppsFlyer’s most comprehensive and ambitious report to date, draws on billions of data points across the second half of 2016 to help app marketers identify quality users who will engage with their app over time.

The report offers marketers a breakdown of key engagement benchmarks by platform, category and region:

  • Retention rates
  • Average sessions per daily active user
  • Cross-funnel conversion rates
  • Lifetime engagement

The report focuses on Shopping, Games and Travel apps. However, the overarching observations and trends offer valuable guidance to all app marketers as they seek to optimize their campaigns and target audiences highly likely to engage with their apps over time.

The research confirms that app retention is an elusive goal to reach (findings show only 10-12% of users remain active 7 days after downloading an app, and only 4-5% are still active after 30 days). Yet it also points to positive results that show marketers using data to drive results. Based on a year-over-year comparison the report shows how overall retention has improved in some regions and across some app categories. “The good news for marketers is that retention has mostly improved – especially among non-organic users on both platforms,” observes report author Shani Rosenfelder.

Organic traffic – that is, people who download your app without you having to invest in paid or social promotion to get their attention – is great to have but not the way to drive serious growth. In a marketplace brimming with apps, and where app store search is fatally flawed, marketers can’t rely on WOM to take their app from good to great. For that they need to target non-organic traffic. To do so, they must harness data that will allow them to target audiences that promise high engagement and low wastage of their ad spend.

Among the findings:

Small gap, big opportunities: Average sessions, the number of times a daily active user will engage with your app, used to be vastly different between organic and non-organic users. However, the gap between these two groups of users across platforms is closing fast. Globally, Android organic users come in at 3.81 sessions compared with 3.56 sessions for non-organic users on the platform. That’s a mere 7% difference. On iOS, the gap is slightly wider with organic users outperforming non-organic users by 9%. The report reads this to mean there is “substantial quality to be found among non-organic users.”

Retention rates rocket: When it comes to retention North America has the best Android score across all regions. For organic users the breakdown is 35.8% for Day 1 Retention and 4.1% for Day 30 Retention. Retention rates among non-organic users on Android is 27.3% for Day 1 and 3.5% for Day 30. On iOS retention rates for organic users comes in at 30.6% for Day 1 (26.3% for non-organic users) and 5.1% for Day 30 (3.1% for non-organic users). The report also lists the cities across the U.S. where marketers are highly likely to find high-quality users for their app.

Significantly, some of the less prominent media markets have the highest mobile app engagement rates in the country, according to AppsFlyer.

 

Engagement is encouraging: Overall, organic users of Shopping apps on Android engage in 41.94 content views (for the period studied). Non-organic users engaged in 26.14 content views. (In the case of iOS the content views are 29.46 for organics and 12.14 for non-organics.) Draw a completely plausible parallel between Content Views for shoppers and “News Views” for consumers, and the report gives app marketers at content and media companies good reason to be positive about the results they can achieve. One audience looks at products, the other looks at articles. In both cases, more views mean more chances to engage and retain (or monetize) your audience.

User acquisition campaigns that focus on driving installs are passé. The next wave of activity and excitement is all about finding ways to identify audiences that will interact with your app repeatedly. Marketers need to approach this challenge armed with the critical data they need to optimize their investments. It is essential to understand the key characteristics that separate loyal and quality users from everyone else and target non-organic users who measure up to their organic traffic.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Neurological research proves it: Context affects advertising effectiveness

The effectiveness of advertising depends, to some degree, on the content that surrounds it. In other words, content context has a direct impact on the way advertising is received. A new research study, “Why premium editorial content” from Teads, a native video advertising marketplace, analyzes why premium editorial content creates more impactful environments.

Teads partnered with Neuro-Insight, a neurological research firm, to better understand how premium content neurologically changes the way people recall advertising messaging. Four premium publishers, Conde Nast, Forbes, Time Inc. and The Atlantic participated in the research to expose video ads within their premium editorials on mobile. Consumers were also exposed to the same video ads within their personal Facebook feed in order to compare the two experiences.

The research revealed that premium editorial content is 16% more personally relevant and engaging than social news feeds. Interestingly, regardless of the personalization capabilities in a user’s Facebook feed, consumers still felt more personal relevance to the premium content. Users invest more of themselves in the premium editorial consumption experience.

Total Recall

What makes this finding so important? Premium editorial delivers a more powerful memory impact and a more memorable advertising experience. For the detailed-oriented left-side of the brain, premium editorial had a 19% greater impact on memory and for the emotional right-side of the brain, it had an 8% greater impact on memory. Memory encoding drives higher ad effectiveness and is an influencer of consumer purchase behavior.

Interestingly, both premium editorial content and Facebook social feeds create high impacts on long-term memory, however, premium content generates a greater and more even activation in both the left and the right sides of the brain. The triggering of both sides of the brain offers the best opportunity for broad video advertising creative approaches to influence a consumer’s long-term memory. Premium content is unique because of its impact to both the left- and right-side of the brain, meaning, it has an equal and considerable opportunity to influence consumers.

It’s not just that premium publishers offer advertisers a quality audience, their content also creates a higher impact on advertising. Teads’ research concludes that content with a high level of engagement is more likely to impact the memorability of online video advertising. Importantly, premium content raises the level of impact that social platforms cannot duplicate.

Industry-Research

Podcast audiences are climbing, but the medium faces growing pains

Podcasts are earning a strong foothold in digital media. The popularity of podcasts such as “Serial” and “This American Life” aided the medium in reaching new audiences. In fact, Edison Research reports an estimated 57 million Americans over the age of 12 listened to a podcast in January and February of 2016.

The Knight Foundation recently made several investments to support podcasting programming and on-demand audio formats. In the report “From Airwaves to Earbuds,” the Knight Foundation partnered with Lutman & Associates and Dot Connector Studio to identify and assess the impact of these investments. To date, the Knight grantees are successful in growing their audiences and finding new ways to attract younger listeners as well as revenue.

The grantees in the digital transformation of audio content include:

Project Carbon supports the development of a seamless digital listening platform across all NPR affiliates and available through all digital devices.

Radiotopia helps independent media makers develop audiences and revenue for their work.

Gimlet Media develops and release podcasts for its network.

New York Public Radio develops and share the Discover app, WNYC’s mobile app for on-demand listening.

RadioPublic PBC helps listeners discover, engage with, and reward creators of stories, podcasts, and other audio.

The research identified 10 key themes:

  1. Podcast audiences are growing. At least one-fifth of U.S. consumers (21%) have listened to a podcast compared to 12% in 2015 according to Edison Research. As you can see from the chart, the podcast audience listens to less radio and more podcasts than the average.
  2. Digital-first companies are building podcast audiences without a need for legacy broadcast systems or audiences to maintain and are more agile to develop strategies to capture useful audience data.
  3. On-demand listening offers new and creative ways to offer local news stories.
  4. Racial and gender diversity is needed in podcast hosts, only 22% of podcasts are hosted by women, although that’s up from 12% in 2015.
  5. Public Radio is a key talent pool for the podcasting medium.
  6. Podcasting is a great space for experimenting new skills, styles and techniques.
  7. Data standards and methods of shared metrics are needed in on-demand audio and podcasts.
  8. Identifying new revenue paths is important. Podcasting recently used CPMs to enlist advertisers.
  9. Podcasting and on-demand audio formats are partners in the radio space. Leveraging this synergy could prove a positive move
  10. Podcasting can offer a powerful discussion. It presents a unique experience because the content evolves in the mind of the listener.

The report raises several questions about the future growth of the medium: Is there enough scale in podcasting today to be a profitable medium? Can it serve as a medium for interesting and original brand integrations? At this stage, there’s no one-answer-fits-all for how podcasting should generate revenue. However it is clear that podcasting offers a level of engagement with audiences that offers an opportunity to experiment with new forms of revenue generation.

Industry-Research

Online consumers know the source of news about half the time

In today’s digital environment, there are multiple consumer pathways to access digital news. Online news consumers are almost equally as likely to get their news directly from a news website (36%) as they are from postings on social media (35%) reports Pew Research Center, in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in their study, “How Americans encounter, recall and act upon digital news.”

Online consumers are aware of the news sources they consume. In fact, over half of respondents (56%) could provide a name of the digital news source if the followed a link to the story. The links come from social media; news organizations’ emails, texts and alerts; or the emails and texts of friends or family.

Path to content

The report also identifies the pathways online news consumers use for specific content categories. Business and finance news, for example, are 53% more likely to be accessed directly on a news website than social media (12%). Entertainment news, in contrast, is more likely to be found on social media (53%) than on a news website (25%).

Consistent with previous findings, about half of both 18 to 29-year-olds (47%) and 30 to 49-year-old (42%) online news consumers received their news through social media as compared with less than of quarter of older adults (23%). Interestingly, women who consume news online (39%) obtain news through social media slightly more often than male online news consumers (30%). In contrast, more males who consumer news online (43%) go directly to websites than women who consume news online (29%). When 18 to 29-year-old online news consumers click on news links, they remember the source about half the time (47%) compared to 30 to 49-year-olds and 50 and older (57% and 61%, respectively).

Name that source

In terms of naming their news sources, CNN was recalled by 14% of those who followed links, Fox News 12% and Facebook 10%. Important to note, Facebook is not a publisher, it only distributes news, it does not produce content. The New York Times, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, Yahoo, ESPN, The Washington Post and CBS were reported between 3% to 6%.

Online consumers seek out the news online about 40% of the time, compared to 24% of the time when online news consumers come across news story while already getting news about something else.

Follow-up, recall and call to action

Online news consumers are just as likely to follow up (58%) on news content they consume as often as they do not (42%). In terms of follow up actions, speaking with someone in person or over the phone is the most common action to take (30%) searching for more information (16%) and posting on social media (10%).

The study also found that news that comes directly from a news site tends to be recalled more often but is less likely to bring about any action such as discussing, sharing or commenting. In contrast, news that comes through a personal connection, an email and text from friends or family, is most likely to bring about a follow-up action.

Additionally, the follow-up actions taken tend to remain within the landscape in which the online news originated. In other words, news found on social media is more likely to then be shared on social media sites, while news that comes through search engines is more likely to lead to additional searches.

Today’s online news environment faces many challenges. It’s important for digital publishers to identify and understand the different digital media habits, especially since consumer attention is splintered across multiple news sources and platforms. Publishers can now align their strategies, to strengthen brand equity, build engagement and encourage social action, by identifying the best pathway to showcase their online news coverage.

Industry-Research | Perspectives

What 2016’s most engaging content teaches us

From the U.S. Election and Brexit to the summer Olympics; from terrorism to the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, 2016 was filled with stories that 2016 captured our attention.  But everyone wants to know what type of content captures the most engagement.

It is heartening to see that it was quality journalism from well-established media outlets, not fake news, that people engaged with most. Chartbeat’s Most Engaging Stories of 2016 ranked the most captivating articles of the year from quality publishers as defined by Total Engaged Time — the total amount of time visitors spent actively engaged in content.

The Chartbeat Most Engaging Stories of 2016 were selected from over 46 million articles on over 50,000 global sites, and registered over 2.5 billion minutes of active engaged time.

From 538’s General Election predictor, which received more Engaged Time than the top five stories of 2015 combined, to personal narrative, longform and interactive, the top stories span categories and formats. More importantly, they teach us many lessons about how news is consumed and shared.

  1. Interactive, data-rich storytelling is alive and well. It’s no surprise that the topic that garnered the most amount of Engaged Time during 2016 was politics, which had nine of the top ten stories. In many ways, this was also the Year of the Interactive. Election prediction pages, live results pages and interactive maps from the likes of 538, BBC, Fox News, CNN and the NY Times captivated our attention and drove billions of engagement minutes.
  2. First person journalism resonates and gets shared. From major investigative pieces rooted in undercover work to the moving letter from a Stanford student to her assailant, first-hand accounts affecting personal and societal rights captured attention as well as empathy. (See “A sexual assault victim’s powerful message to her Stanford attacker,” a first-person narrative from The Washington Post). These powerful, personal narratives were strongly driven by social traffic, demonstrating that when we emotionally connect with a story, we’re more apt to share and discuss it with our network.
  1. The context of premium publisher environments matter.
    The articles that made the list and came out on top, regardless of topic, were those that stayed true to a publisher’s voice and audience. According to our research, readers that came direct to a publisher’s site were the most loyal and engaged in terms of time spent. Those who came from social and search were less engaged. In other words: All impressions are not created equal.
  1. Promoting articles is not just an art; it is a science.
    It is not enough to just write compelling content anymore. Consumer reading behavior varies by device, time of day and referrer channel (i.e. social, search). It also demonstrates specific patterns based on content type (i.e. breaking news vs longform). For example, as we’ve seen in previous Chartbeat research, in times of breaking news like the election, consumers use search first to find what they are looking for, then after the event, they turn to social to interact and share.For publishers producing quality content, it is critical to understand these audience platform patterns across social and search and how best to promote your stories.
  1. We expect consumer engagement around quality journalism to continue well into 2017.
    Publishers didn’t shy away from covering the truth in 2016, and if the early stories of 2017 are any indication, we expect this to continue. In fact, readership so far in January (of politics in particular) is seeing extremely high pageview and concurrent levels, indicating that consumers value quality journalism more than ever.

Terri Walter, the Chief Marketing Officer of Chartbeat, works every day to ensure that publishers and newsrooms have the tools and insights they need for quality content to thrive. A digital marketing veteran of 20 years, Terri has worked over the course of her career to position high potential brands and spearhead thought leadership in media and analytics at companies including DoubleClick, Razorfish and Microsoft Advertising.

Advertising | Industry-Research | Perspectives

Programmatic native: a nascent and growing category

For many advertisers, programmatic native feels like the holy grail. It brings the transactional efficiency, audience targeting and scale of programmatic to in-feed native units that match the look and feel of a publisher’s content. Additionally, publishers benefit by simplifying native ad sales, with instant access to demand sources through programmatic exchanges. Programmatic native offers real benefits to both sides – buyers and sellers.

However, with so much promise, what does the market look like today?

To find out, we at MediaRadar, took an in-depth look at what programmatic native advertising spend looked like in 2016. For the report, we analyzed programmatic native adoption over the last 12 months, identifying the number of brands buying programmatic native ads through popular exchanges, like Nativo, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Unruly, and Bidtellect.

Here’s what we found.

  • More Than 4,000 Advertisers: Last year, almost 4,200 unique advertisers placed programmatic native campaigns across the native exchanges we analyzed.
  • Adoption Grew 86% by Year’s End: Programmatic native surged throughout the year. In fact, the total monthly brands buying campaigns increased by 86% – from 593 in January to 1,133, by November. In Q1 2016 an average of 726 brands placed campaigns each month and by Q4 2016 the per month average leapt to 1,094 brands. This is meaningful growth over just a 12-month period.
  • Still, Penetration Remains Low: In 2016, 50,605 advertisers placed online ads on just the top-200 largest publisher websites alone. As percent of that 50,605, fewer than 10% ran on native exchanges. This means that for all the significant growth last year, there is significant headroom for expansion in 2017.

Takeaways:

There has been a lot of attention given to sponsored editorial and programmatic native in the press in the past year. While the programmatic native market is still small, relative to the overall spend in the digital market, it is expanding and at an accelerated pace. Renewal rates and advertiser feedback are positive, mostly.

That’s not to say that challenges don’t exist (The Wall Street Journal tackled these issues recently), but we observe that the market continues to be a legitimately bright spot for publishers. We forecast a positive outlook for it in 2017.

Todd Krizelman (@ToddKrizelman ) is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Ad blocking remains a threat to digital media

Ad blocking continues to be a serious threat to digital media. A new report by PageFair estimates that more than 600 million devices are now blocking ads worldwide. Ad blocking usage grew by 108 million to 380 million mobile devices and by 34 million to 236 million active desktops from December 2015 to December 2016. Interestingly, ad block usage on desktop browsers continues to grow despite the decline in overall desktop usage. Year-over-year global growth for all devices now represents 30%.

Some key findings from the PageFair 2017 Adblock Report:

Why are consumers using ad blockers?

Two of the top reasons for consumers installing ad blocking software include virus/malware concerns (30%) and interruptive ad formats (29%). It is important to note that over 70% of users chose more than one reason as “most important” in their choice to use ad block software.

How are consumers learning about ad blocking?

Word of mouth still leads in overall ad block conversions. Just less than one-third (32%) of ad block users report they learned about the software from a friend, colleague, or family member. An additional 28% learned about ad block software from the internet, news, or media.

Who’s blocking ads?

Ad blocking usage is the U.S is becoming more mainstream. Usage still skews male with 20% of U.S. males using ad blocking software compared to 15% of females.

Across all age groups, bachelor’s degree attainment was 45% among ad block users surveyed, versus 30% per the US Census. Ad block users in the US are 1.5x as likely to have a bachelor’s degree than the average American adult.

How do consumers react to ad block walls?

Nine in 10 ad block users report they have encountered an ad block wall (site will not allow access unless the ad blocking tool is disable) while using the internet. A full 74% of ad block users stated that they leave a website(s) after they encounter an ad block wall. It appears that ad block walls do not persuade users to turn off their ad blocker, even if only for brief time. However it is possible websites with highly unique and valued content that is not easily obtainable elsewhere may see a benefit to the use of ad block walls.

What are the most annoying ad formats?

Overall, over three-quarter (77%) of ad block users reported that they found some ads acceptable. Over half (52%) of ad blockers users preferred static banner while 35% prefer skippable video ads. In terms of most disliked ads, both non-skippable video ads (31%) and auto-play ads (23%) ranked highest.

Consumers are no longer passive and have taken control of their browsers and—wherever possible—their online experience. Across the board, forecasts are consistent with PageFair’s findings and show ad blocking will continue to grow in the U.S, particularly if ad-blocking software is preinstalled on devices in the marketplace.

Industry-Research

FTC recommendations for cross-device tracking

In the simplest terms, cross-device tracking occurs when platforms, publishers, and ad tech companies trace consumer activity across connected devices. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released the Cross-Device Tracking: An FTC Staff Report, providing usage guidance and recommendations for this relatively new tracking method.

The cross-device tracking benefits include the ability to:

  • Log into email or social media accounts from multiple devices.
  • handoff from one device to another (e.g. one can start reading a book on one device and pick it up on another).
  • Helps to fight against fraud, companies recognize users sign-on to devices with easy authentication methods.
  • Personalize advertising by analyzing a consumer’s activities on all devices and then matching with offline behavior.

Many companies also use a probabilistic approach to extrapolate which consumer is using a device, even when a consumer is not logged into a service. This method of probabilistic tracking uses IP address matching. Typically, an ad platform places a cookie on a consumer’s browser, the cookie regularly includes the IP address of the device running the browser. Since the devices on the same local network often have the same public IP address, the ad platform can surmise that the devices using the same IP address, belong to the same household. It’s important to note that most of the probabilistic tracking companies, like third-party advertising, do not have a direct relationship with consumers nor have access to user agreements on data collection and data sharing.

Many consumers have little awareness of cross device tracking and the information captured from their smart televisions, health information from wearable devices, or offline shopping habits. Therefore, the FTC recommends the inclusion of four central practices for companies conducting cross-device tracking:

  1. Transparency
    Companies should provide meaningful information to consumers about cross-device tracking activities to help inform consumer decisions about whether to use existing opt-out tools, or whether to stop using a site, app or service.
  1. Choice
    Companies should offer consumer choices about how their cross-device activity is tracked. Consumers should be informed as to how the practices apply or are implemented.
  1. Sensitive data
    Companies should stop cross-device tracking on sensitive topics, including health, financial, and children’s information, without consumers’ affirmative express consent.
  1. Security
    Companies are required to maintain reasonable security, in order to avoid unexpected and unauthorized uses of data.All companies in the digital ecosystem, especially those that are consumer-facing, have a responsibility to inform consumers of third party and cross-device tracking companies being utilization on their site and apps.
Industry-Research

Understanding why people uninstall your app

Mobile has become the primary vehicle for expanding audience reach, eclipsing desktop browsing and TV viewing as the preferred on-ramp to explore the world of information and content at our fingertips. But mobile apps are where the real consumer engagement happens – provided companies and marketers add real value.

Why People Install
Thanks to research from Google and Ipsos, How people discover, use,  and stay engaged with apps, we have a better idea of the reasons that will convince a consumer to download an app. And, since people aren’t downloading as many apps as they used to – suffering from what mobile analytics attribution company TUNE calls “download fatigue,”  it’s smart for marketers to make a greater effort to understand factors sure to trigger an app install.

Here are three major takeaways about the factors that cause consumers to download an app in the first place:

  • Price points: Drawing from data from a survey of 1,000 smartphone users in the U.S., Google’s report finds that consumers are price-conscious and privacy-focused. The majority (85%) look at price first and content second. Ironically, 50% of respondents have paid for content and 50% have not. Of the consumers that did purchase content offered by an app, it was access to content and features/functionality unavailable on free alternatives that clinched the deal. Consumers were also willing to pay to remove advertising.
  • Privacy concerns: Another deal breaker was privacy. Consumers will not tolerate (or download) apps they feel invade their privacy or compromise their customer data. Apps that eat memory or battery power are also a no-go.
  • Easy does it: Predictably, most consumers (61%) love apps that are easy to use and navigate. Fresh content (34%) and personalized experiences (29%) are also crowd-pleasers.

Why People Uninstall
So now that we have a sense of the features consumers care about most, it is essential to understand why they uninstall more than 3 of every 10 apps globally. We get some of the answers we need in the November 2016 App Unistall Report, a new report from mobile attribution company AppsFlyer. The report provides critical context around app uninstall rates – data that is not provided by app stores.

Drawing from a sample of 20+ million uninstalls of nearly 500 apps globally the report highlights uninstall rates over a 30 day period (September -October 2016) across platform (Android and Apple’s iOS), category and country (U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, U.K., Germany, France, Russia, India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia). It finds that Android users uninstall apps at a rate that’s more than double the rate among iOS users – an outcome it links to factors such as device space. Faced with the choice between downloading a cool new app, or conserving storage, it appears Android users are quick to click delete. It may also be linked to the fact that Apple devices warn users when they are about to delete an app; no such notification exists on Android.

The report also reveals what Shani Rosenfelder, report author and content marketing lead at AppsFlyer, calls the “insanely high” uninstall rates for app categories on the Android platform such as News (44%), Games (43%) and Travel (33%).

Some of what the report finds is just common sense. For example: Games, which are highly competitive and aggressively promoted using incentivized installs, can see a shorter shelf life and fail to inspire lasting loyalty among an audience demographic that changes taste more often that socks.

Likewise, Travel apps, because they appeal to most consumers during holiday seasons or summer breaks, are not integral to a year-round routine. Unless you travel a lot for your job, it’s hardly out of the question to delete a travel app once it outlives its immediate relevancy. At the other end of the spectrum, Retail apps—ones that consumers reach for often to do their shopping and access deals and discounts—see relatively low uninstall rates (21%).

But common sense can’t fully explain the alarmingly high uninstall rate of 40%  for News & Magazines over a 30-day period. Unfortunately, AppsFlyer doesn’t offer much insight into why this segment is hit so hard. However, we can piece together a convincing list of factors if we remember the reasons Google says people download apps and – more importantly – keep coming back.

High uninstall rates would indicate News & Magazine apps fail to meet our requirement – even demand – for an amazing user experience. Content companies serious about attracting and retaining their users are advised to examine their apps and use analytics to pinpoint where their app is engaging, or annoying, their audience.

Essential issues to consider: Are these apps too difficult to navigate? Is the content stale or irrelevant? Does the app fail to deliver personalized content and experiences? Is the paywall a barrier? Does the app owner collect data without making a convincing case for it? A data-driven approach will provide insights into what flies, or fails – allowing you to allocate resources to address major issues and put less important updates on the back burner.

And a final word about metrics. The AppsFlyer report introduces all app marketers – across all business verticals  – to a new performance metric: uninstall rates.  Marketers must watch and calculate to determine the true lifetime value of their users. Whether that value is measured in brand visibility or monetized through mobile advertising, prudent app marketing and financing takes app uninstall rates – and their differences and similarities globally – seriously.

Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Today’s challenges offer an opportunity to rebuild trust in digital media

With trust in mass media at a record low, publishers look to 2017 as an opportunity to distinguish quality journalism from the fake news landscape and bot traffic of big tech platforms.

CEOs, editors and digital leaders today recognize both the opportunities and the challenges in 2017. Reuters Institute surveyed 143 senior publishing executives in 24 countries to recognize current business sentiment, uncover trends and identify new developments in the digital marketplace. Interestingly, Reuters found that more than two-thirds (70%) of executives believe fake news offers them a chance to strengthened their brands. More than half (56%) say that Facebook Messenger will be an “important/very important” part of their offsite initiatives this year (53% for WhatsApp and 49% for Snapchat). And at the same time, just under half (46%) of these same respondents are more worried today than a year ago, about the role of offsite platforms.

In Reuters Institute’s annual predictions report, the key trends identified for 2017 include:

1. Addressing fake news

  • Fact-checking news outlets becomes the new norm.
  • Platform and algorithm changes allowing for easier reporting of false news (and feeding these signals back into the core algorithms so these sources get devalued).
  • Regulation threats to remove fake news from sites.
  • Algorithms are expected to challenge our bias.
  • Fighting for quality news brands.

2. Redefining publishers’ relationship with platforms

  • Publishers fight back by creating platforms of their own (e.g. Schibsted, started its own platforms for content and advertising to create the scale and data competence to compete with Facebook).
  • Platforms pay hard cash for content.
  • Mergers and acquisitions happen more often as scale will mean operating across multiple platforms.

3. Digital advertising and sustainable business models

  • Subscription payments will focus more about membership and less about paywalls. News publishers, especially, will need to attract new customers, offer new pay services and earn more money from their current subscribers.
  • Data, loyalty and personalization will help with converting unidentified web users into loyal customers by creating more relevant and personal experiences.
  • Mobile alerts and the battle for locked screens signifies the shift to mobile notifications to attract consumers back to apps and websites.
  • Acceptable ads and ad-blocking apply pressure on the marketplace to ensure a more positive user experience with non-intrusive advertising.
  • Sponsored content replaces the displayad model.
  • Pop-up newspapers and magazines will offer in-depth coverage on certain topics but for only a limited period of time.

4. Messaging applications and news bots

  • Voice news bots with voice-activated platforms gain strong penetration (e.g. Alexa and Google Home).
  • Fact-checking bots are activated (e.g. Full Fact, a UK based company, is already looking to developing a service that fact checks live press conferences).
  • Conversational commerce emerges (e.g. Crosby, a travel bot service, that reads your email or group messaging conversations and send you recommendations for where to eat, what to do and when to leave for the airport).

5. Voice as an operating system and the rebirth of audio

  • Podcasts and audio books get a big boost in the car.
  • Improvements to data and advertising around podcasts lead to significant investments by publishers. A new measurement system form Nielsen’s and a Swedish start-up platform Acast offer metrics for podcasts to support advertising models.
  • Businesses start to deploy Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers (e.g. hotels use voice-controlled devices to enable guests to order room service, check the weather and find TV channels).

6. Online video and the future of TV

  • Disillusion with Facebook Live shifts a live focus towards sport and exclusive music, both strong vehicles to attract audiences and advertisers.
  • Oversupply of short form video leads to falling advertising premiums.
  • New opportunities with feature-based videos for brands integrate messages into videos.
  • Video-selfies to experiment with new fantastical filters (e.g. Splash is a new app that allows you to create and annotate 360-degree experiences).

7. The blurring of television and online video

  • Top content will increasingly be watched on big screens.
  • Competition for talent and rights heats up to drive new subscription and retain existing users.
  • News bulletins lose audiences triggers new ways to appeal to young (e.g. CNN acquired video-sharing app start-up Beme, co-founded by YouTube creator Casey Neistat, is building a new brand around distinctive reporting and commentary for millennials).
  • New cross-platform metrics for TV.

8. Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)

  • New reality tech offers huge potential to shape experiences for entertainment, education and commerce. Forecasters suggest around 30m devices will be sold by 2020 generating revenue of around $21 billion.

9. AI and algorithms under fire (e.g. An example gone sour was Microsoft’s friendly AI driven chatbot Tay. Within its first 24 hours on Twitter with Millennials, it was spouting offensive and racist messages such as “Hitler was right”).

10. Automation and a jobless future means robo journalism on the way

  • More automated stories.
  • Intelligent content production systems.
  • Computer and networked assisted investigations.
  • Filters and alerts are being developed to help manage the information overload (e.g. SamDesk and Dataminr are deployed in newsrooms to pinpoint and manage breaking news in social networks).

11. Cyber-Wars, and Personal Security

  • Encryption and surveillance are on the rise.

12. New technology

  • Sharper screens, fold out phones, better batteries.
  • Faster and more reliable networks (e.g. 5G).
  • Clothes as a platform with wearable technology.
  • Biometrics, the end of passwords and checkout-free shopping. A new shopping experience, Amazon Go, that automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves using computer vision and sensor fusion.

13. Start-ups to watch

  • Cheddar is a new business news video network for millennial. Founder Jon Steinberg of Buzzfeed is charging $6.99 for premium services on its own website and is looking to drive carriage fees from services like Facebook Live, Twitter and Netflix.
  • Zipline is a small robot airplane designed to carry vaccines, medicine and blood in developing countries.
  • Houseparty is a new group video chat, up to 8 people can chat at a time, from the creators of Meerkat.
  • Accompany aims to provide an automated briefing of all the information you need before you walk into any meeting including relevant files, email conversations with attendees, details about their lives sucked from the web plus up-to-date information on company performance.

2017 provides many opportunities for publishers to rebuild consumer trust in digital media. The Reuters Institute predictions suggest that publishers must help scrub the digital environment from bot traffic, annoying ads and fake or misleading news. They must hold themselves and others responsible and keep a watchful eye on the algorithmic accountability tied to the digital experience. Importantly, publishers must continue to build their digital brand and diversify their revenue streams beyond digital display advertising.

Industry-Research

Is it good business for your native ads to comply with FTC guidelines?

It’s been a little over a year since the FTC published guidelines for native advertising. In just 12 months this has led to a significant shift in how native or sponsored content has been implemented. In our original analysis, MediaRadar discovered that in year 2015 75% of publishers hosted native campaigns without any mention of the content being advertising. With the FTC’s guidelines in place however, that number has dropped substantially. Over January we’ve re-run our analysis. Now just 5% of publishers fail to mark native content at all. This is a significant shift in accountability and transparency.

At the time the regulation was announced, some in the industry was concerned that such thorny legalese would dampen adoption of native advertising. But this has not been the case. At all. Here are some quick stats based upon our most recent analysis of native advertising:

  • We have found monthly increases in the number of brands placing native, in almost every month. There are 16,000 native advertisers buying ads in the past year, up 73% from 2015.
  • Programmatic native exchanges have become very good at amplifying native, placing 4,182 native advertisers in calendar year 2016. These are advertisers running on exchanges such as Triple Lift, Nativo, Bidtellect, and Giant Media.
  • There have been very few fines over publishers or advertisers violating the guidelines. The FTC set the new guidelines and the industry has reacted and internalized the feedback.

It is true that there are still examples of native content that is not complaint with FCT guidelines. Folio covered this as recently as last week. But in the big picture, with our country focused on fake news, there is more emphasis on premium content, and premium transparency, than ever before.

Todd Krizelman (@ToddKrizelman ) is Co-Founder and CEO of MediaRadar (@MediaRadar). Growing up near the epicenter of technological innovation in Palo Alto, California encouraged him to become an entrepreneur and co-found of one of the world’s first social media sites, theGlobe.com. Krizelman also held leadership positions at Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr and Random House. With his expertise in ad sales and innovation, Krizelman joined veteran web architect, Jesse Keller, to found MediaRadar in 2007.

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