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Industry-Research

What this past quarter of engagement data tells us heading into 2020

When we look back at audience engagement insights this year, we confirmed what we’ve known for some time — mobile readership is growing rapidly across the world.

Overall, about 40% of direct visits take place on mobile devices, according to Chartbeat’s global publishing data. As if that weren’t enough to get your distribution strategy in order, we’ve found that poor mobile user experiences could be impacting your ability to drive reader revenue.

This quarter’s snapshot of the global audience engagement landscape points to many of the lessons media and publishing communities can use for strategic planning moving forward. Also, it’s worth taking a look back at our previous international reader engagement data published here earlier this year to see how those trends have evolved in just the past few months.

Africa, Southern Europe see mobile jumps

Mobile pageviews continue to climb in Africa, increasing from 77% to 79% in the past quarter. Mobile readership jumped across the rest of the world as well, notably in Southern Europe, which grew from 61% to 65%.

We previously noted that one of the newest, yet largely unknown, drivers of traffic is coming from mobile-first aggregators. A significant portion of this growth is driven by Google Chrome Suggestions and Google News, which each grew more than 50% this year. Outside of the US, we’ve seen platforms such as TikTok and TopBuzz drive an increasing amount of mobile traffic. Our data tells us to expect more of the same heading into the new year.

Search traffic in Central Asia, China rises

Pageviews coming from search engines continue to climb across Asia compared to last quarter. Search engine traffic in Central Asia is up 2% (now 30%), while China is up 3% (now 29%), and Southeast Asia increased by 1% (now 23%).

Southeast Asia still leads in social pageviews

There’s been something special about social interactions in Southeast Asia throughout 2019. For the third consecutive quarter, this region has made up the greatest share in percent of all pageviews coming from social platforms, holding steady at 31%.

Latin America: Home of the engaged reader

Three quarters in a row, readers across Latin America showed the highest Average Engaged Time at over 34 seconds. Close behind, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. We’re continuing to look into the drivers of growth, but we have seen major innovations among publishers in the region.

Northern Europe loyalty drops, but still tops

Northern European readers have lead loyalty metrics for three straight quarters, with the highest percentage of loyal* pageviews (46%) compared to total pageviews among readers.

This matters — there have been clear lines drawn between reader loyalty and the willingness to subscribe.

Audience engagement insights: This quarter and a look ahead

The themes we’ve seen across global publishers this past quarter align with the broader trends across digital media — we’re in a mobile-first environment that rewards user experiences as much as the quality of content. With the data we’ve outlined in mind, here are a few takeaways that can be taken into 2020:

Strategize for regions and devices. Segmentation is key to reaching new audiences and expanding current readership. The surge in mobile and search traffic across the world can show publishers:

  • How regions interact with content irrespective of one another. 
  • Where readers are and how they engage with content, which will ultimately benefit their audience development efforts.

Leverage Engaged Time. High Average Engaged Times across the world, particularly in Latin America, present new opportunities to build loyal readers. Our research shows loyal readers consume more content, so optimizing articles to ensure readers are Recirculating will help media companies get the most out of their increased engagement.

There’s still an opportunity to expand your regional audiences by optimizing for the platforms and devices where they interact with content most — this trend will continue into the new year.

And, as mobile engagement continues to grow in influence, this places an even greater emphasis on making small adjustments to your site and digital content. Why? These trends we’re seeing may evolve as reader habits continue to change, but improving audience loyalty is an opportunity that digital content creators can’t afford to lose.

 * A loyal reader is someone who returns to your site in at least 50% of days in a two-week period.
Industry-Research

Research confirms healthy consumer appetite for digital subscription products

A new research report, Connecting the Dots: Digital Subscriptions – Media Subscribers’ Motivations & Preferences, reinforces our findings earlier this year that the subscription marketplace is vibrant and growing. The News Media Alliance, Star Tribune, and the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication research echoes the findings in our DCN Digital Subscription Economy report, which was released in September.

Both reports used online surveys to collect information on consumers’ willingness to pay and motivations for subscribing to news, entertainment, and sports content. DCN conducted its survey among a national sample of 1,000 U.S. adults while the News Media Alliance research sampled residents of Minnesota, with 497 respondents. Regardless of the sampling different methods, both studies produced similar findings in terms of consumer appetite for digital subscriptions in the marketplace.

Number of paid media subscriptions

The News Media Alliance analysis identified that the average household subscribes to on average almost four paid subscriptions across newspaper (print, online, or app), streaming music, streaming movies, streaming television, and magazine (online or app). More specifically, the average household pays for about 1.3 news subscriptions and approximately 2.5 entertainment subscriptions. The DCN Digital Subscription Economy research reports similar findings, on average, subscribers pay for 4.3 different digital media subscriptions.

Digital subscription spending

The News Media Alliance research reports that consumers are willing to spend, on average, $636 per year, or $53 per month. Almost exactly to the dollar, the DCN research found that digital consumers are willing to spend $54 per month on average or a total of $648 per year. Importantly, the News Media Alliance research also focuses on local news media. Readers of Star Tribune, the leading major newspaper within Minnesota, are willing to pay $70 per month, compared to subscribers overall.

Video subscriptions drive value

Connecting the Dots finds that spending on entertainment content is a key driver of subscription spending in general and has an important relationship with spending on other types of content. It’s no wonder, according to Brian Wieser, global president, business intelligence, GroupM, with Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon, NBC’s Peacock, and AT&T’s HBO Max could each average around $5 billion on content in the U.S. Interestingly, the News Media Alliance research shows that the more money that respondents spend on entertainment, the more likely they are to spend on national and local news.

DCN’s Digital Subscription Economy report also concludes that streaming subscription value is driven more by video streaming services than by live TV streaming, digital audio, or digital print subscriptions. In fact, when respondents were asked if they had to choose only one type of paid digital subscription to receive, 36% of replied video and 33% replied television. This was by at least a 2:1 margin compared to other digital media subscriptions services (i.e. Live TV, magazine, music/podcasting/radio, newspaper, print and sports). This value-topping source of entertainment is fueled, in part, by big-budget original productions with significant publicity. This drives “must have” status, Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). It is also increasingly impacted by bingeing behavior, which affects the finding that video streaming subscriptions (movies and television) lead in ultimate value.

Both studies show a robust and rapidly growing digital subscription marketplace. It doesn’t appear that consumers are anywhere near reaching a tipping point of “too much” spending or “too many” services. Importantly, both studies provide publishers with insight into the dimensions of consumer value to help inform their subscription strategies, offerings, and messaging.

Industry-Research | Revenue

Navigating nine consumer paths to digital subscriptions

People are motivated to subscribe to their news digitally for a variety of reasons. It’s a personal path that often takes time. Some people are driven by a topic of passion. Others subscribe to support journalism, yet others opt to subscribe because of a lifestyle change. In the Paths to Subscription Report, the Media Insight Project , an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, identified nine distinct paths to subscriptions based on consumer motivations and conditions. This study surveyed 4,100 recent subscribers to 90 US local newspapers to understand their motives and mindsets at the time of the deciding to subscribe.

The nine paths to subscriptions:

1. Digital Paywall Converters

The majority of these subscriber groups (61%) buy a digital subscription because they hit a limit of free stories they can read online and wanted unlimited access. Demographically they tend to be younger, high-income, highly educated, male, and Democrats. This group is twice as likely to subscribe to large metro papers as other subscribers. Improving the user experience of the subscription sign-up page, especially a short frictionless experience,  may help to increase conversions in this segment.

2. Topic Hunters

This segment is highly interested in one or two particular subjects, which helps drive them to subscribe in order to access this content. Topic Hunters are often so engaged in content of interest that when they hit the meter limit, they immediately opt to subscribe. They tend to be highly educated. Publishers may see a lift in conversions by promoting and messaging specific topics of interests like politics and sports with a direct call to action. 

3. Locally Engaged

This group is interested in content about their community. They want to be locally informed. In fact, all Locally Engaged subscribers report accessing local news is important to their decision to subscribe. Similar to Topic Hunters, the Locally Engaged are interested in news alerts and email newsletters regarding local government, their neighborhood, and other local civic news.

4. Social Media-Mobile Discoverers

These subscribers engage with their newspaper and its journalists on social media and read the articles on mobile devices. Demographically this group is much younger than the others and tends to be slightly more female and more likely to identify as a Democrat. The Social Media-Mobile Discoverers are also likely to follow individual reporters on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Publishers can message these readers to like, follow, comment, and share articles to fully engage these subscribers.

5. Journalism Advocates

This group is motivated to subscribe because they want to support journalism. Nearly all Journalism Advocates report they value supporting news organizations and like that it keeps a check on political leaders. Demographically, this group is younger and more digital-focused than others and are also likely to identify as a Democrat. They are also more likely than other groups to live in urban areas and subscribe to large metro papers. Similar to the Digital Paywall Converters’ path to subscribing, this group values unlimited access to content.

6. Life Changers

This group decision to subscribe is due to a transition in their life. These subscribers may have just moved to the area, started a new job or encountered a change in their lifestyle allowing them more time or money to sign-up for a subscription. Importantly, publishers should target readers who are new to the geographic area, recent graduates, retirees, or someone with a new job or promotion.

7. Coupon Clippers

This group is driven to subscribe because they value coupons, “I subscribe to get coupons and ads…not the news” or “… coupons, but then I actually started reading it.” Publishers can engage this segment by promoting a newspaper’s coupon section. Digital coupons should also be tested for a positive user experience impact on  subscriber conversion and engagement.

8. Print Fans

This segment, while they prefer print, now access their news subscription digitally as well. Print Fans tend to be female (56% vs. 46% of other subscribers) and more than half live in the suburbs. Publishers can promote the print edition to this segment but also attract them digitally by providing exclusive content of interest online.

9. Friends and Family

This group subscribes as part of the social circle in their lives. Often friends or family introduced them to a new publication. Friends and Family look for high-quality and interesting articles in their subscription package. A great way for publishers to engage and attract this group is through referral programs, where subscribers can refer friends or family in order to receive a discount or a free gift.

The Media Insight Project offers insight consumer motivates to sign up for a subscription. While subscribers value quality journalism there are also many other important drivers of subscriptions. Some factors sit in the background and take time for a person to act on, while others immediately trigger subscriptions. Publishers need to understand the segments of potential subscribers in detailed to maximize on opportunities for conversion

Industry-Research | Perspectives

Mobile aggregators: The opportunity for referral traffic we’re not talking about

Referral traffic to content has risen in recent years due in part to a largely unknown channel — mobile-first aggregators. Here’s what we know about mobile aggregators, why they matter, and importantly, their growing influence over reader traffic.

What is the mobile aggregators story?

Mobile-first aggregators present a growth story — the referral traffic they send to publishers has doubled in the past two years. A significant portion of this growth is driven by Google Chrome Suggestions and Google News, which each grew more than 50% this year (and drives significantly larger shares of referral traffic than Twitter).

The field of global mobile aggregators is also growing. Tokyo-based SmartNews and China-based news aggregator TopBuzz have shown rapid expansion, driving an increasing amount of traffic to sites. More importantly, their growth has changed the traffic landscape. Smartnews and TopBuzz are both now sending as much traffic as Yahoo.

Why content creators should pay attention to mobile aggregators

Digital-first organizations are still in the early stages of understanding the primary drivers of subscriptions. However, effective strategies rely on identifying the behaviors content creators can (and want to) encourage that will ultimately lead to more reader revenue.

From our research thus far, publishers have had far  less success in converting readers from mobile-first aggregators compared to more traditional channels such as email. Connecting the dots is crucial.

Therefore, a deeper understanding of mobile-first aggregators can open up a whole new level of engagement, and by extension, a new reader revenue channel.

Next steps: Demystifying mobile aggregators

Based on what we currently know about mobile aggregators, here’s what content creators  should keep in mind:

Strategize around these new mobile referral sources

Overall, we see the mobile-first aggregators as more of a missed opportunity than an unsolvable problem. We believe content creators can take advantage of this mostly untapped source of traffic by understanding their unique impact and optimizing content accordingly.

Audience development tactics are needed

For too long, mobile-first aggregators have been categorized as a subset of the larger platforms (i.e., Google search) we know well. However, we believe they should be seen as their own channel, which would get publishers closer to segmenting (and therefore optimizing) key drivers of traffic.

It’s all about attribution

Segmentation of traffic leads to better attribution. The ability to uncover mobile aggregator-specific patterns and better track their impact. Moreover, it can clear the path towards leveraging the channel for higher engagement, loyalty, and conversions.

Our data shows that the growth of mobile-first aggregators has significantly upended the traffic source landscape. Publishers would be remiss to take this shift lightly, as they may be missing out on a major source of referral traffic in the long-term.

This also coincides with a trend we’ve long seen — the fact that mobile-first readers are demanding better experiences. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that aggregators have become this increasingly influential source of traffic.

Industry-Research

Story labels alone won’t restore trust. But depending on your approach, they can help

An alarming number of consumers don’t trust the media. Since trust hit its all time low in 2016, the industry has been hard at work restoring this critical factor. The media industry and social platforms now employ a wide range of approaches in order to address the proliferation of inaccurate and misleading stories. Some media brands have undertaken marketing and educational efforts to help make the connection between brand and the quality of information more explicit. And labeling has been used as a means to help consumers quickly identify the source of, and type of, information they are viewing. 

This last approach — labeling — takes a classic print strategy and brings it into the digital medium. A new study from The Center for Media Engagement (CME) set out to evaluate the effectiveness of labeling stories. Unfortunately, the primary takeaway is that labeling alone does not improve consumer trust in the information before them. In fact, most of them don’t even notice labels or recall them accurately after reading an article. 

Labels alone will not restore trust

However, this is not to suggest that labeling should be abandoned altogether. Upon deeper inspection, the research found that some labels work better than others. The research also suggests that, when conceived of as explicit and even educational, labels may be effective as part of an overall trust-building strategy. 

The Center for Media Engagement’s research set out to learn:

  • Will labels affect whether readers trust a story?
  • Will readers notice and remember the labels?
  • Does the in-story explainer label work better than the above-story label?

Key findings from the research:

  • Labeling stories did not affect trust.
  • Nearly half of the participants did not notice whether the story was labeled.
  • Those who reported seeing a label were not particularly accurate in recalling the type of label. Of the two labels, recall was better for the in-story explainer label

What label?

Clearly, the research demonstrates that people glaze over most story labels (i.e. news, analysis, opinion, sponsored) if they notice them at all. Overall, 45% reported that they did not notice whether an article was labeled or not and that percentage did not vary depending on whether the article actually was labeled.

More concerning was the finding that, when asked, most people believed that the article was labeled news. This is a potentially problematic default assumption given efforts to use labels to prevent the spread of disinformation and to help consumers distinguish opinion, commentary, and satire from hard news and analysis. 

The research analyzed whether the effect of the story labels on the ability to recall the label varied based on participants’ backgrounds, including their age, race, ethnicity, education, income, gender, political ideology, and political partisanship. It is interesting to note that only one variable seemed to matter: age. The younger the participant, the more likely they were to recall the label correctly when the story was labeled news or opinion.

Explainer labels, explained

CME also compared the traditional above-story label to an in-story explainer label and no label at all. The in-story explainer label provided definitions of each label based in part on those proposed by the Trust Project.

Overall, the study found that in-story explainer labels increased the likelihood that people would recall the correct label compared to those who did not see the label and those who saw above-story labels. However, they still found that many people failed to recall whether the story they read was labeled or not. 

Sixty-three percent of those who saw an article without a label said they did not recall whether there was a label (25% correctly recalled that it was not labeled). Fifty- eight percent of those who saw an article with an above-story label could not recall whether the article was labeled (24% correctly recalled what the article was labeled). On a more encouraging note, only 24% of those who saw an article with an in-story explainer label failed to recall whether the article was labeled, and 66% correctly recalled the article label. 

More work to be done

Unfortunately, regardless of label type, the use of labels alone did not improve consumers’ view of the information’s trustworthiness. Past research from CME suggests that a combination of strategies to signal trust – such as story labels, author biographies, and descriptions of how the story was reported, can increase trust.

Given reader’s digital consumption habits, it is significant to reveal the low recall for labels, particularly those placed above the story. Other efforts, such as describing how a story was reported, in conjunction with the finding that explainer labels are somewhat more effective suggest that transparency and consumer education will be critical in restoring trust in digital information. 

Industry-Research

Understanding how young people consume news: It’s personal

The role of news for Gen Z and Gen Y appears to be individualized, rather than characterized by broad generalizations, which is tricky business for news providers. According to new research from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, How Young People Consume News and The Implications for Mainstream Media, adults aged 18-35 view the news from the perspective of what it can do for them as individuals, rather than for society as a whole. The study took a multi-faceted approach of tracking news consumption in conjunction with in-depth discussions groups among 20 young adults, in the UK and US.

News values

Reuters identified two specific themes reflecting the motivations and values of this cohort regarding their engagement with news and news brands:

  1. Using news to progress your personal development:
    • Status: Provides value and allows you to feel confident.
    • Identity: Builds and communicate your identity. The news you engage with contributes to defining who you are, and your views.
    • Learning: Allows you to better yourself, increasing your knowledge and success.
  2. Consuming news to increases your enjoyment in the things you do:
    • Connections: Eases your daily conversations with others,
    • Entertainment: Provides fun and original moments.
    • Passion: Helps fuel your passions and interests.

While Gen Z and Gen Y recognize the positive role news can play, its value does not necessarily translate into greater relevance for traditional news outlets. Unfortunately, today’s 18 to 35-year-olds are more distracted and less motivated to seek out news.

Consumer news segments

To build engagement with Gen Z and Gen Y, it’s essential for news publishers to understand content interaction in each moment, medium and for the individual. Reuters identified four consumer news segments to provide news publishers with insight and opportunities to generate content with the intent to build a meaningful relationship with those under-35.

Heritage News Consumers

These users consume a little of traditional news brands. However, this kind of consumption is very limited due to the lack of time available in their busy lives. Their user profile shows high access to news brands but low news consumption. Newer technologies, like podcasts and social media feeds, are more desirable and a fit better with their packed schedules. News publishers should think about how to make news easier to access by using innovative technology.

Dedicated News Devotees

This segment consumes news throughout the day but mostly on alternative and third-party platforms. Their user profile shows high access to news brands and high news consumption. This segment is the most engaged with news brand apps, the most dedicated to appointment news consumption and they believe in the value of news. Given this segments relationship with quality news, they are more likely to become subscribers. Publishers should think about unique benefits to target and promote to this demo.

Passive News Absorbers

Members of this segment are not interested in a relationship with news brands. They receive their news with little effort and take in information that surrounds them. Interestingly, they do feel the need to be informed but do not look to premium publishers for their news. Their profile shows low access to news brands (self-led) as well as low news consumption. Publishers should find ways to increase brand fame and name recognition with this cohort. In addition, allow for easy access to bold headlines, news summaries and short videos to attract Gen Z and Gen Y to quality news content. 

Proactive News Lovers

This segment is committed to news consumption. While they know news brands, they prefer to curate across multiple sources than rely on a few specific branded ones. Proactive News Lovers often skim news content. Their profile shows low access to news brands (self-led) but high news consumption. Given this segments passion for curation, news publishers should seek to offer new technology to help them process a collection of news articles.

Building a future

Understanding Gen Z’s and Gen Y’s motivations and values in news consumption offers insight into how best to build their brand loyalty in news brands. News formats, native to mobile, may also help news brands reestablish their relevance with adults under 35 years old. Connecting to this audience, above all else, is critical to the survival of news publishers.  

DCN-Research | Research

New DCN research explores consumer appetite and satisfaction for digital subscriptions

Digital Content Next (DCN) has released findings from its new research, DCN Digital Subscription Economy*, that indicate a healthy and rapidly-growing digital subscription marketplace. The DCN study surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers regarding the array of direct-to-consumer paid digital subscription offerings across numerous media sectors and genre.

On average, digital media subscribers are paying for more than four unique subscription services. And two-thirds of subscribers (64%) perceive high value in connection with their subscription(s). Consumer value is high no matter how much they spend, how many services they have or how much they earn.

The market is transitioning with several big-brand entrants like Disney+, Apple TV+ and HBO Max joining the booming marketplace. However, it doesn’t appear that consumers are anywhere near reaching a tipping point of “too much” spending or “too many” services.

Streaming subscription value is driven more by video streaming services than by live TV streaming, digital audio or digital print subscriptions. This is fueled, in part, by big-budget original productions, significant media publicity, “must have” status and consumer’s attraction to bingeing content.

Value also appears to be driven more by consumers enjoying the ability to choose from among a variety of streaming services than by desire to shed their cable service. For those who continue to subscribe to cable, their driving reason is that they’ve always had it and are “used to it.”

Subscription spending

A majority of digital media subscribers are not immediately sure how much they spend on their digital subscriptions each month. This is another indicator that they have not yet reached a sense of over-spending. When asked to think about and to calculate their monthly spend, their $54/month average expense suggests a willingness to add to their news and entertainment budget. In other words, pricing of many of the most popular digital streaming subscriptions – particularly video subscriptions – seems to be perceived as reasonable and affordable, at least for the time being.

Drivers of subscriptions

Across the board, subscribers of all digital media types (video, audio, print) prize their control(direct, personalized, anywhere/anytime access) above everything else. Propensity for show bingeing, a manifestation of control, also means consumers are frustrated when complete seasons of what they want to watch aren’t available. Content discovery appears to be a non-issue with just one-quarter of video streamers (28%) reporting difficulty with discovering video content worthwhile to view.

DCN will continue to track this dynamic and shifting marketplace of digital assets consumed à la carte to provide publishers with insight into the dimensions of consumer value and to help inform their subscription strategies, offerings and messaging.

* An abridged version of the findings from the DCN Digital Subscription Economy Study is accessible to the public. Please note the full 48-page DCN Digital Subscription Economy Study is only available to DCN members. If you are a DCN publisher member, please be sure to log in or register to access this special members-only research, which will appear below this notice once you have logged in.

Advertising | Featured Post | Revenue

Beyond subscriptions: Redefining the value exchange between audience and publisher

Publishers are pouring their hopes into subscriptions and memberships. That’s understandable. Consumers are exhibiting a (slowly) rising propensity to pay for digital news, which analysts hope heralds a return to the halcyon era in which subscription revenue was the basis of many newspaper and magazine P&Ls. Digital subscriptions offer the additional benefit of copious user data collection, which also buoys their advertising business as well.

The New York Times’ 4.7 million-strong subscriber base has given many publishers hope that subscriptions can work. Although the Los Angeles Times’ recently-revealed figures make it apparent that access to a large enough audience isn’t enough on its own if the renewal rate isn’t high.

However, even the most diehard optimists and proponents of subscription revenue have to admit that subscriptions alone are not a universal panacea to the need for digital revenue. Only a relatively small proportion of people are willing to pay for online news and only likely to pay for a single news subscription As the latest Digital News Report states: “the question of whether people will ever pay for an online news subscription has evolved into a question about how many subscriptions people will pay for.” The report concludes that, at least for the time being, the answer appears to be “one.”

Worse still, the report finds that the proportion of people willing to pay has not grown significantly in the past few years. This suggests that there is effectively a hard cap on how many people will ever pay for digital news. Those other consumers, effectively unwilling or unable to respond to requests for donations or subscriptions, present a problem. So, as cash-strapped publishers search for new sources of revenue, the question arises: How do you monetize the un-monetizable?

Information exchange

Some publishers have attempted to redefine the value exchange for the consumers that they don’t believe they can convert to paid subscriptions. Instead, they ask them to provide raw information in exchange for access. Some publishers in India, for instance, have asked users who arrive on the page to complete an action in exchange for the content. Google’s Madhav Chinnappa told me:

“[The idea] came actually from a group of students. They saw these moves to subscription and their concern in India was ‘what happens if all the good content goes behind a paywall, what happens from a democratic perspective.’ Yet they understand why publishers are doing that. So they said ‘is there a way to try and actually unlock content in a value transfer that isn’t around money?

“Their idea was creating a platform where publishers would allow access to their content for an action on the part of the user, something like labeling an image. I think someone described it as almost like a Mechanical Turk for access to content. I thought this was really clever because it they were coming at it from a point of making sure that there’s access to this information, but understand that it needs to be a value transfer.”

Other publishers worldwide offer access to content in return for answering a survey or providing some personal information. The Financial Times, for instance, has experimented with offering visitors the opportunity to answer questions around brand awareness for access.

This approach has the benefit of allowing the FT to extrapolate from that data its audience’s likelihood to buy from a brand, which it can then use to bolster its advertising sales pitch. Four years ago (which may as well be the Cretaceous period of digital publishing given how much has changed since then), Google estimated that publishers employing a Google Consumer Survey could earn $.05 every time a site visitor answers a survey question.

However, developments around GDPR and increased public awareness of data privacy have re-established the value of the publisher when it comes to user data. Thus, the potential value of those answers has increased. As ever, the devil is in the details when it comes to schemes like this. Really, the execution of an interruptive survey can make or break the establishment of a value exchange in the mind of the audience.

One-offs

The focus on long-term subscriptions is, as discussed earlier, a smart one on the part of publishers who command a serious share of the market. However, smaller publishers face a choice between going incredibly niche (effectively becoming the only game in town for a particular bit of information) or finding other ways of generating direct consumer revenue.

The Guardian, with its exhortation at the end of articles for its readers to support the paper, has seen success with one-off donations. Of the one million people who chose to contribute, 600,000 were one-off donations.

It is notable, however, that even Wikipedia has had a hard time convincing its audience to pony up and support the site through donations. That is despite ranking in the top ten websites by traffic and offering users a slew of ways to pay. This suggests that a campaign that encourages one-off donations is a Sisyphean task, and one that carries more inherent risk than a regular subscription.

Still, just as some publishers are attempting to redefine the value exchange by offering access in exchange for information, other organizations are attempting to make one-off payments more viable. Axate, for instance, which allows users to pay funds into an online wallet that can then be used to buy access to individual articles, is already being used by popular sites including Popbitch.

Axate’s CEO Dominic Young said that the long-term value exchange of hard paywalls doesn’t work for many consumers of digital news: “Our observation about the market is… the consumer behavior is strongly driven by habit. Media consumption generally exists in a kind of casual part of most people’s [habits], in the same place as cups of coffee. In other words, people casually but frequently buy, but very rarely make commitments. You don’t subscribe to Starbucks.”

However, Axate joins a long line of those who have tried to make micropayments work for the media business. So, while there’s debate over the terminology of the one-off payment (with ‘tips’ and ‘donations’ both carrying a sort of semantic weight that puts some publishers off), the reality is that some consumers would welcome an easy way to have one-off access.

Off the wall

Beyond those quite reasonable attempts to change the value exchange, there are others worth noting. Traditionally, content consumers who opt not to pay directly have been monetized through advertising. However, despite improvements over the past few years, the ad ecosystem has been stacked against individual publishers.

It’s a situation that has been exacerbated by the rise of ad-blockers. In February of this year the Internet Advertising Bureau UK commissioned YouGov to conduct a survey on ad-blocking, and found that roughly 22.6% of adults in the UK choose to block ads, a figure that has remained steady for the previous three years. And in the US, nearly 26% of internet users (and climbing) block ads. Meanwhile, an Association of Online Publishers’ survey estimated that adblocking was costing UK publishers “more than £18.4m in 2018, up by more than a third from £13.7m in 2017”.

In this well-reasoned post from February 2018, Salon noted that “with the increasing popularity of ad-blocking technology, there is even more of a disintegration of this already-tenuous relationship; like most media sites, ad-blockers cut deeply into our revenue and create a more one-sided relationship between reader and publisher.”

Salon took an unusual step in an attempt to re-establish an equitable value exchange for audiences. They asked consumers to allow Salon to use their computing power while they were on the site to mine crypto currency. This made headlines at the time, with responses noting variously that it was a controversial yet brave attempt to find a new revenue stream. (Mind you, other less courteous sites had been doing exactly the same without informing their users.)

However, despite all the noise at the time, Salon has since moved to offering ad-free premium offerings. Its subscription offerings range from a year in duration to one-hour long.

Walled-in

Unfortunately, news subscriptions – and the move to harder paywalls – do not serve the vast majority of news publishers well. Their widespread adoption may well encourage more people to pay for access to news content, but it will be the largest publishers who benefit from that increased propensity in the short to medium term.

For others, efforts to redefine the value exchange between content creator and consumer – whether through information exchange, in one-off payments, or anything else – are essential in order to learn how to monetize seemingly un-monetizable audiences.

Industry-Research

Where are the world’s most loyal readers? Hint: It’s not North America

Publishers looking to understand how high reader engagement translates to long-term loyalty in 2019 should look no further than Northern Europe. For consecutive quarters this year, Northern European readers had the highest percentage of loyal pageviews compared to total pageviews, according to data compiled by Chartbeat. (A loyal reader is someone who returns to your site in at least 50% of days in a two-week period.)

We’ve documented how European publishers are experimenting with marketing to highly-engaged readers to take advantage of a short window to convert them to loyal subscribers.

However, the data shows that the Americas create more than enough engaging content that, by all accounts, should translate to higher loyalty figures. For example, readers in Latin America engaged with content for an average of 34.2 seconds, while those in North America engaged for 31 seconds.

What gives? Chartbeat’s second quarter international audience engagement insights indicate it could be emblematic of a broader industry trend: U.S. publishers finding it difficult to leverage strong reader engagement into revenue opportunities. 

More on global reader engagement data and trends from the past quarter below.

Africa and Asia drive mobile, social traffic

Mobile traffic has eclipsed desktop across the world, particularly in Africa*, where 77% of all pageviews are from mobile devices. This is closely followed by the Central Asia and Southeast Asia subregions, with 75% and 74% of pageviews coming from mobile, respectively.

Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East made up the greatest share in percent of all pageviews coming from social platforms, driven largely by their high use of Facebook.

By continent, the story remains largely the same as our subregion data. In Asia, 68% of pageviews in Asia come from mobile devices. This is followed by Europe and North America, where it is 61% and 60%, respectively.

Facebook dominates social referrals. The social giant drove over 4.5 billion pageviews for the past quarter. It’s trailed by Twitter, which was responsible for approximately 408 million referrals.

Asia leads referral traffic from search

Central Asia (28%) has the largest percentage of all pageviews coming from search engines, with China (26%) close behind.

Looking at search traffic across all Chartbeat publishers, Google leads by a wide margin at over 10.5 billion referrals this past quarter, according to Chartbeat data.

What this past quarter says about audience engagement

Our global audience engagement data gives publishers a snapshot into broader reader trends that supplement their long-term marketing strategies. Here’s a quick recap of the data:

Europe is loyal. Each of Europe’s subregions tracked by Chartbeat, led by Northern Europe, make up the globe’s most loyal readers. What does this mean? European paid readership models could be one of the first places to look as global publishers attempt to build revenue.

Africa and Asia are mobile (and social). This past quarter reminds us that content consumption via mobile devices is a global trend. Aggregators such as Google Chrome Suggestions and Flipboard are still serving as influential external referral sources. Shore up your mobile experience if you haven’t already done so. The high social referrals in these continents should also prompt publishers to identify regions that are driving social traffic. They should also evaluate whether they’re offering the right content to best engage these audiences.

The Americas are engaged. Readers in Latin America and North America are highly engaged with content. However, they fall on the lower end of the loyalty spectrum compared to the rest of the world. How publishers in the Americas bridge that gap will be key to their goals of unlocking more subscriptions revenue.

*Chartbeat’s dataset in Africa is not broken out by subregion to maintain data integrity
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Revenue

Predicting conversion: Mastering the complex variables of user behavior

When a visitor comes to your site: Who’s most likely to take the action you want and who’s not? And what would you do differently if you knew the answer to that question? Because the answers are critical for subscription success.

In my former role at New York magazine, where I spent a decade building the digital media business, I often found myself facing these questions. While we weren’t selling digital subscriptions yet, we knew the value of loyal users. That is, the five to ten percent of users who came back four or five times a month and consumed 40% to 50% of total pageviews. We wanted to entice more people to come back more often.

I knew there were users who converted from new to returning to loyal along a fairly straightforward path, and others who took longer, or a more convoluted journey, to reach that point. And I also knew there were quite often those that never got there at all. If only we could understand those paths and predict audience behavior, I figured, maybe we could do a better job of nurturing users towards loyalty. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the tools back then to make those predictions — which meant we had to try to urge everyone down the same path. And since each of those users had different needs and affinities towards the brand, that inevitably meant we lost users along the way that we might have been able to entice if we’d had a better idea of what personalized path was most likely to lead them to come back again and again.

Finding the right formula

Back then, like media executives everywhere, I wished for something that would help my team better understand our audience and their future actions. Was there a magic formula we could apply? 

Fast forward to today and my current role as SVP Strategy at Piano. Piano has spent years trying to find answers to the same questions I had when I was at New York magazine. And what we came up with turned out to be much more complex than anything I ever could have envisioned.

In fact, it’s not a straightforward formula at all. And it’s not one set of behaviors but dozens. Not only that, but the exact combination of behaviors that matters is different on every website. 

Predicting future actions

When Piano launched LT[x] — a machine learning framework that predicts likelihood to act — it opened up a window into the behaviors that matter for conversion, beginning with subscribing. Rather than the simple formula I might have envisioned back at New York magazine, though, the subscription propensity model that emerged from LT[x] (called LTs) tracks 76 different metrics, using machine learning to pull them together and predict conversion actions. 

Before launching, we beta-tested LTs with two customers, and saw exactly the types of results it could achieve. One customer experienced a 20% increase in its paid conversion rate, while the second saw an increase in conversion rate of over 40%. The metrics that mattered — those that predicted who was most likely to subscribe — included the share of visits on desktop, pageviews per visit and the days of the week a user visited. Equally interesting were the metrics that predicted low likelihood to subscribe. If visitors arrived from social media even 20% of the time it drove low subscription likelihood, and if 95% of pageviews were on articles, with little homepage traffic, that also indicated low likelihood. For both of those initial sites, though, the actual weight of each metric varied.

It’s only been since we rolled the model out further, though — across five customers, and eight sites and counting — that we saw just how much difference exists from site to site. The way each metric contributes to likelihood to subscribe is unique to every site we’ve worked on. In some cases, in fact, the same metric can have the opposite effect from one site to the next.

piano subscriptions metric graph

Users are different and so are the metrics

Take one site we’re working with, as an example. There, where visitors are looking at the site plays a central role in their likelihood to subscribe. Since it’s a regional newspaper, that’s not surprising — the most active users are local. For other sites, a particular metro area may have little significance, but national boundaries still tend to matter — with users in a site’s home country generally having higher subscription likelihood.

There are some behaviors that pop up again and again. For the same newspaper client, the more unique sections and authors users read also contribute to that same site’s high likelihood to subscribe rates — also easy to understand for a newspaper with a diverse range of writers and content types. The more a user is engaged across the board, the more likely they are to become loyal and subscribe. This breadth of engagement is almost always a strong positive signal. 

Meanwhile, for other customers, it’s engagement metrics like number of active days or number of paid offers viewed or the share of pageviews from recirculation that are top predictors. For clients with very high value content where visitors are quick to convert, it may be whether a visitor is coming from desktop or mobile that has the biggest impact, with the typical high engagement metrics having a smaller impact.

All of that means there is no one magic metric for the industry to focus on across the board. The good news is that, with the spread of AI-enabled technologies, understanding and harnessing this information is becoming possible for the first time.

Customizing the experience 

So, what does this mean for the media providers trying to use those predictions to customize their user experiences? 

Once the metrics that matter are determined for each site, companies can start to use the predictive powers of the algorithm to personalize the cues they put in front of a particular user and the path they take to lead them to convert. That could mean putting a subscription offer in front of those most likely to subscribe, for instance, but a registration offer in front of those less likely to. Or it might mean changing the meter height based on whether a user is more or less likely to subscribe.

And for users, that personalization matters just as much as it does for the companies that provide it. Customers expect one-to-one personal experiences. It’s what they wanted when I was still in media, and even more so it’s what they’re looking for today.

About the author

Michael Silberman, SVP Strategy, leads Piano’s Strategic Services team, helping clients develop reader revenue strategies and drive success and revenue on the Piano platform. He joined Piano in 2018 after 10 years building the digital media business at New York magazine, and earlier, as one of the top editors launching and growing MSNBC.com in the early days of the consumer Internet.

Industry-Research

Young people rely on the news. Unfortunately, they don’t always find it reliable.

The good news is that young people continue to read the news. The bad news is that they are losing faith in it. A report released by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation finds that 88% of young adults access news at least weekly, which includes 53% that do so every day. Conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, the report analyzes the findings of a survey of 1,660 adults between the ages of 18 and 34.

Unsurprisingly, young adults of all races are highly digital news consumers. They find their news on social media, smartphone alerts, or news websites. And a majority of young adults share news regularly with their friends, family and social networks. Fifty-six percent of young adults share news stories at least weekly, with around 1 in 5 sharing news every day.

Political leanings and learnings

Certainly, it is heartening that young people rely on the news. However, it is unfortunate to note that the report found that a majority of young adults are concerned about the impact of news on democracy and unity in the country, expressing that news organizations may actually divide and polarize citizens.

The survey found that many young adults have concerns about the ideological and political leanings of news sources, according to the survey. In fact, a majority believes certain news sources have ideological positions, divide society, and hurt democracy.

Cultural and ethnic perspectives

Given that the report surveyed large samples of African American and Hispanic participants, the results offer significant insights across races and ethnicities. In particular:

  • A majority of young adults rely on news to make decisions, particularly young African American people: More than 60% of young adults use their favorite news source to decide which policies to support. And more than 50% do the same when deciding who should have their votes. Young African Americans are twice as likely to do this as young white Americans.
  • Young adults largely believe that their race or ethnicity is not covered regularly in the media: Overall, 31% of young adults say that people of their race, or issues that affect people of their race, are rarely covered in their most-liked news sources. Forty-seven percent say the same thing about their least-liked news sources.
  • The majority of African American and Hispanic participants do not feel like media sources accurately or fairly portray their groups, when they do get coverage: Only 45% of African Americans and 40% of Hispanics say their most-liked source very accurately portrays them.
  • As young adults question the media’s coverage of race, many get news from ethnic media sources: 58% of African American and 52% of Hispanic young adults use ethnic media sources at least once per week. Seventy-five percent of Hispanics and 71% of African American young adults who say they regularly experience racial discrimination. Thus, they are more likely to use sources that provide news specific to their race or ethnicity.

Use this news

Given the transformation of news consumption, it is gratifying to see that – while they may access it differently than previous generations – today’s youth continue to rely on news to inform significant decisions. Perhaps the fact that much of news consumption takes place once-removed from the source and that it is delivered in often polarized social media contexts are forces driving today’s young news consumers’ perception of the potentially negative impact of news. They are certainly affected by the fact that the news does not consistently reflect their racial and cultural perspectives. While dispiriting, these insights should prove helpful as news organizations seek to better engage and serve young audiences, who are seeking out news that reflects and informs their perspectives.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

To maximize OTT performance, should we think lean back or lean forward?

Given that OTT is the new TV, how should audience interaction be considered? TV is conventionally viewed on a large screen ten or so feet away and described as a “lean back” viewing experience. However, the new capabilities that come with OTT are associated with “leaning forward” – similar to browsing the Internet. In the digital age, people navigate content by swipes on mobile touch screens or clicks on portable laptops and desktops. In other words: They lean forward.

From a media perspective, it has proved optimal to follow traditional TV practices in order to maximize viewer time with OTT video content. This starts with playing video the moment the app opens just like tuning into a TV channel. These days, the practice is becoming standard particularly across OTT apps for broadcasters with linear establishments. (AKA, leaning back.)

By the numbers

The metrics behind the lean-back practice are particularly compelling when comparing average view time for media companies that have transitioned from on-demand menu starts to starting with video streams. Average viewer times have increased between 80-120%— more than doubling from less than a half hour to over an hour per session.

Moreover, Pluto TV, the leading free streaming service with more than 15 million monthly users, takes it a step further with 24 hours of programming on OTT channels. Pluto recently announced a view time of two hours per session, which already represents half the average daily view time of TV in the U.S. of nearly four hours. And consider Hulu (with 28 million customers), which recently announced binge watching on the service as a new ad targeting metric. So, length of viewing time is now a metric of significance in OTT viewership and even advertising.

Ad engagement

From an advertising perspective, lean-forward ad engagement can be far more impactful. This means capturing consumer attention with interaction of any kind, whether a game of sort for brand recall or data capture for direct response. In digital, user interaction is the driving force behind premium and higher value ad opportunities. 

However, when we consider OTT as the new TV — where leaning back is the status quo on a connected TV versus the underwhelming amount of time spent watching OTT on mobile phones — a new balance must be struck with the level of interactivity and added value that is possible. Compare this to the lean-back paradigm of TV in OTT, where the remote is purely a means of turning the stream on or off or tuning the volume up or down.

With lean-back, media companies and marketers will need to capture the most meaningful signals from viewers through their viewing behaviors and activity along their content journey. They will also need to break the mold with interactivity in simple and beneficial ways to the viewer, such as skip or continue to watch a certain commercial like done with simplicity in digital.

For OTT, we’ll need to take a hybrid view to maximize consumer understanding and ad performance. As a medium, OTT must be evaluated in the context of “lean back” in terms of programming presentation, and a “lean forward” opportunity in the presentation of commercials through viewership behavior.

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