The Covid-19 pandemic drove a surge in digital media usage. However, as consumers slowly return to work and to everyday life outside the home, digital media consumption been impacted. New research from GWI, Connecting the Dots, finds that the gradual shift to our pre-pandemic habits has downshifted digital consumption.
However, GWI sees the present as an interim period. For now, it remains unclear whether consumers will return to their previous content consumption levels — or perhaps reach new heights. This report offers an early look at consumer’s media behavior and attitudes as they slowly resume post-pandemic life.
Consumer attention serves as a commodity in today’s media marketplace. The attention metric took on new importance during the pandemic. Marketers and advertisers seek digital properties that offer large viewer and reader data that exhibit high levels of time spent. However, the attention economy concept as currency is only part of the advertising equation. GWI believes understanding consumer attitudes and feelings is a necessary part of the calculation and offers insight into their behavior.
Multiple streaming services add up
Television consumption increased during the pandemic and so did consumer spending on subscription services. Though GWI’s research finds that some consumers think they spent too much money. Over one-third (34%) of consumers state that TV services are too expensive in Q2 2021 compared to 27% in Q2 2020, an increase of 26%. In addition, in May 2021, a quarter of consumers were thinking of canceling or already canceling a streaming service.
Gaming grabs consumer attention
The pandemic ignited a period of exceptional growth for gaming. GWI cites a Google Trends’ analysis that compares the popularity of video gaming to a TV program, a theatrical release, and a new album release. The analysis tracks the popularity of Animal Crossing, a social simulation video game series, Tiger King, a popular Netflix program, Tenet, a new movie release, and Folklore, Taylor Swift’s album release — from January 5, 2020 to September 27, 2020. Tiger King, Tenet, and Folklore each had short-lived peaks, while the popularity of Animal Crossings, after an initial peak, maintains relatively steady interest.
Gaming is a strong contender for consumer attention, especially among Generation Z. According to GWI’s survey in Q2 2021, more than half (54%) of Zers are interested in gaming compared to 42% in Q2 2020. In contrast, Gen Z’s interest in television declined from 44% in Q2 2020 to 42% in Q2 2021.
Audio is screen-free
GWI’s report also shows audio entertainment, including streaming music and podcasts, is an integral part of consumers’ lives, especially when at home and during exercising. Interestingly, based on Q2 2021 data, streaming music is the only media type outperforming its Covid peaks that took place during lockdown.
GWI suggests that one of the reasons for audio’s success is that it doesn’t compete for screen time. Audio streaming offers an escape from screen fatigue. Using different screens all day may boost usage of audio media at the expense of visual media platforms.
Attention retention
As out-of-home activities become the norm once again, media channels need to think about re-engaging consumers. Transitioning from a pandemic mindset to a new normal is not easy for anyone. Media companies need to rethink their success and sales metrics and move beyond consumer attention. Offering quality content, positive experiences, a relatable community, opportunities of fandom, and possibilities of escapism, can present new opportunities of engagement.
National Geographic is an Instagram powerhouse. The publisher has just topped 175 million followers, which makes it the 12th most followed account on the platform and the only media brand to crack the top 50. Their photographs and stories reach tens of millions of people around the world each day.
With such a vast following comes great responsibility. The world as we know it is changing. But explanations about how, why, and what to do can be divisive. National Geographic’s mission is to use science, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world. But how is it being translated into its social media strategy?
National Geographic’s Director of Instagram Josh Raab knows that many younger people aren’t subscribers to the publication. For many of them, their primary interaction with the brand will be through social media, rather than longform journalism.
Instagram’s audience skews much younger than many other social platforms, with two-thirds of users aged 34 or under. So ,for a publisher like National Geographic, there is a huge opportunity to reach younger people with key messages about climate, conservation, and our changing world. But it requires tactful handling.
Finding the nuance in conservation conversations
Raab’s aim with NatGeo’s Instagram accounts is to educate, rather than overwhelm followers with problems. “Anything that we do is impact driven,” he emphasised. “We know the change that we want to see is going to have to come from future generations. So our hope is that [Instagram] is the way that we can cover a lot of what we see in the world, and further[people’s] knowledge and understanding of it.
But it’s a delicate balance. As social media grows increasingly divisive, Raab is keen that NatGeo remains a place to go for information, rather than explicit activism.
“What we don’t see enough is the nuance in some of these conversations,” he said. “I think that the biggest way that we can help is to really educate people on the complexities of some of those problems or some of those subject areas that we’re covering, and let them make up their mind for themselves.
“At the end of the day, you won’t see us yelling and screaming in ways you’ll see in other places. Social media for us is more about telling people about the world and highlighting some of the changes that we’re seeing over time.”
He sees Instagram as a way of learning by stealth, even if that means competing for audience’s attention spans. “We try to trick people into learning,” he said. “How do we get people who might be on a platform for instant gratification to walk away with an unexpected understanding of something they didn’t necessarily go looking for?”
A unique curation process
In order to encourage a range of voices and perspectives, NatGeo has come up with a unique model for curating their feed. Posts are actually submitted directly by the photographers themselves. This includes the captions. Although they are reviewed by the publisher, each one is in the photographer’s voice, which avoids the text sounding too corporate.
“It’s a great way to connect the audiences directly with the photographers, who are really the storytellers, the explorers, the people behind the stories,” Raab explained.
This approach also helps NatGeo avoid the trap of posting content just for the sake of high engagement. Raab noted that the team have a good sense of how a post will perform before it’s put live, but that doesn’t influence whether or not it’s posted. “For us, it’s about whether or not the story feels relevant,” he emphasized. “We’re pretty focused on having a broad coverage… rather than only the ones that would perform. If that were the case, you would see a lot of polar bears and cute animal content!”
Raab believes there is a distinct advantage to having an account the size of NatGeos when it comes to posting about issues like climate and conservation. “You can guarantee that you’re reaching people across the globe, of every interest and political standing,” he explained. “So we do the storytelling we think is important, and that the world needs to see.”
“We’re lucky enough – or simultaneously unlucky enough – that regardless of what that is, we will have people who love it and those who like it less!”
Comprehensive storytelling through Stories, Reels, and AR
When it comes to getting the most out of Instagram, Raab has noted that although the algorithm changes, it consistently favors new functionalities like IGTV, Lives, or more recently, Reels. “We try to play into those, because we know that’s where we can reach the most people,” he explained.
This approach led the publisher to be an early experimenter with Instagram’s Spark AR tool. Although producing AR experiences aren’t yet on the regular schedule, the team have released over a dozen filters over the past year. These range from an AR tour of Mars to a Yosemite National Park filter, complete with a bear selfie experience.
“We saw an opportunity to do more comprehensive storytelling within a platform that is intended to be used more for social purposes,” said Raab. “We’ve tried to find a way to integrate both storytelling and social experience into singular creations. And, for the most part, I think we’ve been successful.”
The more informal nature of Stories complements what NatGeo is aiming to do with inspiring the next generation. The off-the-cuff feel, where scientists and photographers are telling their stories from the field, help show NatGeo’s followers that although they are incredibly talented, they are people. “I want them to watch it and think, “That could be me one day,”” said Raab. “That’s just integral to what we do.”
Inspiration through education
Climate change and conservation are polarizing political issues, especially in the social space. But NatGeo’s commitment to bringing in the voices of leading scientists, educators, storytellers, conservationists, and more into its photos, captions and stories makes it a place that people can come to learn, rather than be preached at.
“Getting the message out to younger audiences is important. But we also want to inspire them to do some of what they’re seeing,” Raab emphasized. “We want to educate them about the world, rather than yelling at them about the exact changes they need to make, or making them feel like change is hopeless.”
“Ultimately, it will be up to these younger generations that we’re able to reach there to make the change that the world will need.”
As the most-followed publisher on Instagram by a country mile, NatGeo is doing something right. Education by stealth – and the occasional cute polar bear picture – seems to be a winning formula for inspiring the next generation to care about our world.
Last Friday marked 100 days since Donald Trump officially left the White House as U.S. president. His departure ended a chapter crammed with chaos and controversy for hundreds of millions of Americans, and many more around the world.
As the pandemic enters a second year, a deafening lack of Trump has been coupled with a general public malaise from too much news. As a result, the historic ratings bump enjoyed during the Trump administration quickly turned into a slump. Few outlets have been spared.
The Washington Post reported that of the three largest cable news networks, only Fox News has held relatively steady. Its three prime-time opinion shows fell just 6% in viewership since the first weeks of the year. MSNBC and CNN, meanwhile, declined 26% and 45% in the 8-10 p.m. ET time slot, respectively.
But it’s not just cable networks that have been affected. The Washington Post itself saw a 26% fall in the number of unique visitors to its website from January to February. The New York Times experienced a 17% decline in the same period.
A slump by any other name
While the “Trump Slump” is a legitimate reason for the downward trend, it’s not the only cause. Nor is it a universal experience.
At The Atlantic, SVP of growth Sam Rosen says that, “We’ve found even in just the past five or six months, what has really changed is that the motivation to understand this historic moment has decreased and the desire for personal intellectual growth has increased.”
As he points out, “It’s been an exhausting five years for many people and especially the past year. So, it kind of makes sense that the core desire to just understand what’s happening in the world still exists. But people want to invest in their own growth.” And the company is banking on that willingness to invest.
After a decade of open access, The Atlantic relaunched its paywall 20 months ago. The 163-year-old organization now boasts more than 750,000 subscribers. It is well on its way to eclipsing one million paying members by the end of 2022. Rosen says that ensuring the outlet’s retention and acquisition efforts are equally strong is critical for achieving this goal.
Fundamentals and experimentation
On the retention side, The Atlantic focuses on the fundamentals. For example they’re migrating as many subscribers to auto-renew as possible. Targeted email campaigns are also reawakening dormant subscribers.
Acquiring new subscribers has been more colorful. For example, experimenting with new slogans such as “Read. Think. Grow.,” which are a change from more newsier lines of messaging in the past. Rosen said The Atlantic thinks of its audience in terms of psychographics: people that are curious, interested in the world, willing to consider multiple perspectives, and open to new ideas.
“Looking at the vanguard of marketing technology is one of our biggest priorities right now,” Rosen said. “We’re evaluating a slew of technology partners that do customer journey orchestration, dynamic paywalls, personalization, and content recommendations. So that is where we’re doubling down.”
Not content with the content
Another newsroom building value not reliant on Trump’s hoopla is Axios, which was launched in January 2017. The well positioned itself strategically for a post-Trump world. Though the fall in traffic is unmistakable, Axios’ director of audience and growth, Neal Rothschild, believes this could actually be a good thing.
“I think if you were going to ask the founders of the company [Axios] whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, they would say it’s 100 percent a good thing,” Rothschild said. “Jim VandeHei, our CEO, has maintained that people needed to wean themselves off of politics during the Trump years. It was like fast food and it became very unhealthy. So, we’re starting to see the news landscape kind of clear out and make way for the topics that were core to the founding of Axios. Though it may not have seemed like it just because Trump sucked up so much oxygen.”
Those other topics include the rise of China, climate change, and the gaming industry. For the latter, Axios hired Stephen Totilo and Megan Farokhmanesh from Kotaku and The Verge, respectively, to write Axios Gaming. Their newsletter launched this week and will focus on the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Rothschild added that the company isn’t limiting its expansion to specific topics. Its strategy of hiring experts to build readership extends to local journalism in news deserts, where just a single outlet currently operates, or where no community newspaper exists at all.
Perspectives and connections
Centralized business units have been crucial for Axios. It’s technology, sales, audience, and marketing teams have allowed it to fill local voids without the vast capital needed to build startups from scratch, like The Texas Tribune in Austin and Seattle’s InvestigateWest. Axios currently has five local newsletters. It also recently announced plans for a sixth in Northwest Arkansas.
“To stand up a newsletter in each city, we try to hire two experts that can helm that newsletter so that we can speak to the city and have it growing quickly. I think that’s a departure from previous models for supporting local news. Usually, you need more of a physical presence in that city or at least need to invest more on the ground,” Rothschild said. “That’s not a huge site traffic audience strategy. But it is a pretty good growth and revenue strategy. And it is increasing our footprint around the country.”
Global ambitions
As important as local news has been to CBS, Trump was an international story. Significantly, the international audience it gained over the past four years remains. While many U.S. outlets have cut their international presence in recent years, CBSN — CBS’ 24/7 streaming news service — last year expanded to almost 100 countries. That global presence was critical in CBSN delivering 291 million streams in the first quarter of 2021, up 30% from the same period a year ago.
Christy Tanner, EVP and general manager of CBS News Digital said her team has only just scratched the surface of its global potential. Through Network 10 in Australia, which ViacomCBS owns, its partner the BBC and its own international bureaus, it’s creating even more international programming.
“With streaming audiences, we do not see what was at one point conventional wisdom in the news business: Allegedly, U.S. audiences are not interested in international news. That’s simply not true from our perspective.” In fact, Tanner said, “We think it’s an important differentiator. It’s important to tell the stories. We at CBS News digital have been extremely fortunate that CBS has continued to invest in international coverage.”
The local news
That said, Trump was as much a local story as he was a national and international one. So, CBS is also taking advantage of the dearth of local newsrooms. It now offers 14 total live streams including 10 in local markets such as the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and Minnesota.
One new feature Tanner is especially excited about are video push alerts. Launched last fall, the proactive alerts nudge CBSN viewers whenever news is breaking across the U.S. Instead of only watching that day’s White House news conference on the national live stream, viewers could easily toggle over to CBSN Minnesota to watch Minneapolis’ police chief providing an update to the George Floyd case.
Tanner says her team sends out alerts dozens of times a day. This means that viewers are engaged in numerous stories, as opposed to any one story such as Trump or Covid-19.
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
The past four years certainly provided newsrooms across the country with a welcome surge in readership. However, the smartest strategists were planning for Trump’s inevitable departure well in advance. As a result, the fall in traffic hasn’t been enough to hurt their bottom lines too much.
For Tanner, who entered journalism as an editor at the AP in 1991, the Trump presidency was just another wild cycle. And she’s experienced many. Tanner says to work in digital media, one always has to be ready for what’s next, and make intelligent fact-based decisions.
“Things are constantly changing and those who don’t adapt fall by the wayside.”
Social media encourages uninterrupted connectivity. With mobiles in hand and alert settings activated, consumers are continuously connected to social platforms. How does the desire for continuous connectedness impact the consumer experience? And what, if any, are the consequences? Ludmila Lupinacci explores these questions in his research article Absentmindedly scrolling through nothing. His study includes a thematic analysis of qualitative data gathered through a diary-interview method.
Expect the unexpected
Lupinacci suggests that social media is purposely designed to keep consumers continuously connected. Social media allows consumers to access events and people they cannot reach directly. At the same time, these platforms offer the ability to interact with others immediately around these topics. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others social platforms pulsate with likes, re-postings, notifications, and trend lists.
Lupinacci refers to these tools as signals of vibrating life. For many, it offers a sense of community and belonging. For others, it offers the potential for virality, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Consumers have become habituated to expect the unexpected. Social media’s monetization strategy is based on consumer engagement because these platforms derive their revenue through data-driven targeted advertising. Therefore, the more time consumers are connected, the more data they collect, the more targeted ads are served.
Media flow
Like traditional media, social media converts audience attention into revenue. However, the methods used to maintain audience attention are different. Media channels, like television and newspapers, use storytelling, fictional or real, to engage consumers. For example, a television series typically organizes its content into logical sequences to keep the viewer’s attention. It fills time by ensuring that something happens. Lupinacci describes this as an intermission or an imminent interruption from the ordinary. In this way, the TV series captures consumer attention and exchanges for advertising revenue.
However, social platforms in general do not organize events into logical storylines. There is no intermission of the ordinary. Any moment, no matter how mundane or commonplace, can earn event status. In fact, consumers remain engaged because they perpetually wait for something remarkable to happen on social media. And this constant, inevitable (if unsatisfying) engagement is readily monetized.
Consumer impact
Importantly, consumers are aware of the time and energy they spend on social platforms. They often describe themselves as navigating aimlessly without finding content of value. They recognize that social algorithms drive their need for connectivity.
Interestingly, consumers identify five different emotional experiences on social media:
Excitement and enthusiasm about possibilities offered by social media platforms. Their enjoyment is often rooted in the possibility of accessing other people’s reactions to, and experiences of, whatever is happening.
Anxiety and the feeling of discomfort. Consumers express that their state of constant alertness, often prompts “stress-scrolling” or “doom-scrolling.”
Reassurance and a gateway for support, comfort, and help. Social media offers endorsement and validation; whatever you experience is also being felt by others.
Exhaustive and overloaded from the influx of information. Consumers express a sense of pointlessness in participating in social media.
Responsibility to remain connected. There’s the constant pressure to be contactable. Many feel they cannot go offline for week without notifying a few people of their whereabouts offline.
A “live” worth living
Lupinacci’s work focuses around what she calls “liveness.” She points out that liveness has been employed by a range of media industries and technologies to promise immediate access to meaningful events and happenings as they unfold. Social media creates a sense of “the live” — in that the unexpected could happen at any time and in that it fosters a sense of real-time connectedness. However, the emphasis is on creating an anticipation of the possibility of meaning, of eventfulness, of human connection. That anticipation, in turn, fuels the scrolling, which fuels the monetization model.”
According to Lupinacci, constant connectedness alters our sense of time, space and what appears as “live.” And she believes that there are consequences to changing our perception of live events. It affects our capability to make sense of ourselves and as a result surfaces ambivalent emotional experience. In reality, social media’s culture of connectivity is a monetization model.
Traditional media captures the value of “live” and “liveness” and provides a meaningful pause, or interruption. It can connect people across continents around events unfolding anywhere. The storytelling model is designed to deliver value and engagement, which is rewarded through time, attention, and revenue. Social media, on the other hand, capitalizes on consumer’s longing for these experiences, but ultimately monetizes engagement alone, not the value of the experience.
With restaurants, bars and clubs closed, you might assume that Covid has created a surge in live TV viewing, but it has not. If you compared U.S. TV audiences in September 2020 with the previous year, all television watching was actually down 10% during prime time. This may seem counter intuitive considering that the average time spent interacting with media has shot up 17% to a whopping 12 hours, 21 minutes a day according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for August. However, digging into the reasons why reveals important opportunities to re-engage audiences.
There has long been a simplistic narrative that live sports viewership is declining. Yet the reality is that huge amounts of sports content is still being consumed. And that number is growing, especially in international markets. The change is predominantly around two axes. The first is that sport is no longer “the only game in town.” It must co-exist within a much wider array of activities. The second shift is that fans are redefining what “sport” content means to them – along with how they want to consume it.
Feeding frenzy
This diversity of content is highlighted by 2020 offering up another landmark. As the year when time spent using an app and/or web via a smartphone or tablet finally overtook live and time-shifted TV. This cross-over has undoubtedly accelerated due to Covid, given increased home working, less travel, and more screen time. However, the data has been moving that way for a few years. Nielsen also points out that 25% of total TV consumption is via streaming. This includes the rise of highlights and “instant” sports news services that are the equivalent of fast food compared to the three-hour banquet of a typical NFL game.
Highlights packages are not new but what has changed is the way in which they are delivered. The big networks have jumped onboard. Fox, ESPN, and others have now added more content available via the web. Yet the mindset for many is still around the “big game” and reporting that fits into a traditional schedule.
In a generation, Netflix transitioned from renting a million DVDs through the mail to touching 200 million monthly global subscribers. However, sports media still trails behind the curve when it comes to the model of instant access.
Bleacher gets it right
However, sports publications like Bleacher Report highlight one possible direction. The Turner owned brand has always delivered exquisite reportage but its rapid diversification into video and social has been striking.
Its “House of Highlights,” an Instagram feed offering highlight clips across several sports, now reaches over 20 million subscribers. Their viewership that has grown 150% in just two years. Highlights describes itself as “Everything you need to see in sports and youth culture.” It offers huge amounts of user generated content. And, while this content is still sports themed, it has much broader in its appeal – especially to younger audiences.
Bleacher is joined by a growing cohort of app and clip-based ways to consume sports content including CBS Sports and Fotmob – with the latter particularly good at notifications. If done well, personalized mobile app notifications, can drive customers into full game viewing as well as scores and highlights.
These brands and others recognize that it’s not all about the game. They help people get their highlights and sports fix from following athletes, teams, leagues, and media companies via social on the go. They also feed the growing sports engagement around fantasy and sports betting. However, these data points do not necessarily translate into full game viewing.
Breaking bread
The fear of cannibalizing traditional TV audiences through online offerings is still deeply ingrained in the psyche of TV executives. But instant gratification culture means that failure to offer a wider buffet of visual sport experiences will make decline inevitable.
And it’s not just creating a like-for-like facsimile. The audience expectation of TV watching versus engaging with on-demand via smartphone, embedded highlights on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or the cacophony of social-led platforms requires producers to rethink program formats.
This raises several challenges. It starts with nurturing a new generation of creatives that are digital natives, with the ability to engage with fans of today. There’s also a need for technical retooling to simplify the production and distribution process. This enables content to be disseminated easily across multiple platforms. It needs to be done efficiently and with the controls in place to ensure that rights obligations are enforced as demanded by contract terms. Last, but no means least, is the ability to monetize multiple platforms by spreading CPM across a wider reach and unlocking far more targeted advertising models.
Innovation zone
A great example of innovation in action is NFL RedZone, an all-in-one channel that when a team reaches the 20-yard line, (i.e. the “red zone”) cuts to the local broadcast of that game. The channel also offers the option to watch any turnovers, game-changing plays and scoring plays outside of the designated area. RedZone also has an “octabox” mode with simultaneous 8 game highlights designed for fantasy football fans.
This ability to deliver “highlight packages on the fly” uses dynamic playlists. It is is part of a surge in Cloud based technologies that are leading the charge to build streaming platforms that can pivot output to match the increasingly diverse audience profile.
The long-term issue is more cultural than technical. Live sport is still a huge deal in terms of direct and ad-related revenue. Messing with a successful formula is certainly a hard call to make. However, the Bleacher report and its siblings illustrate ways to respond to a shift in audience demand. Ignoring the opportunity makes the prospect of an empty dinner table much more likely.
As the U.S. presidential election nears, it’s logical that global publishers want to understand the strategies that can encourage stronger reader engagement. Pivotal, high traffic events that truly showcase their content only come along so often.
With that in mind, we looked back at our analysis of reader engagement trends during major events — including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Brexit vote — to see how audiences tend to interact with this type of unique content. More on our research, along with its implications for publishers, below.
Honing in on audience behaviors before, during, and after events
For the sake of this research, we wanted to put ourselves in the position of publishers for this upcoming election. More specifically, we analyzed data around three major timeframes: before, during, and after the event. These tend to offer the opportunity to reach and engage more readers.
Thinking about pre-election content strategies
There’s no doubt that direct, search, and social traffic have a significant role to play in audience development efforts during major events. However, it’s just as important to understand when they can be most effective.
Our data suggests that the majority of referral traffic in the days leading up to an event will be coming from search, as we show below. This aligns with reader behaviors we saw during the 2016 election. Search traffic was highest leading up to and during the election. In contrast, social traffic didn’t increase until hours later, when reactions (emotions, hot takes, opinions) to the news are more likely to dominate those channels. As such, we see this as a critical opportunity to reevaluate SEO and referral linking strategies in order to maximize traffic during the event.
How audiences seek and interact with content during events
We’ve also seen that loyal readerswill likely come directly to publishers once a story breaks or more details emerge. Meanwhile, the majority of newer visitors will find coverage amid a search results page. This is where pre-election SEO efforts should pay off. It could be the difference between content being seen first or buried among other outlets’ coverage.
This is also where publishers can start to get promotional channels such as social media involved. It’s critical that all visitors, new or loyal, are made aware of a publisher’s stated differentiators during major news events. That could be a “dedication to the facts” or a local angle on the event. Publishers have the ability to gain new visitors without alienating their direct, loyal readers.
Building trust with new and returning readers is important any time. However, now you have a chance during periods of higher-than-usual traffic. Loyal readers consume more than double the content of non-loyal readers. So, the experience you provide today will increase the likelihood they come back again.
Prioritize experimentation with different article formats. When we recently conducted research across COVID-19 related content, we found that the up-to-the-minute appeal of live blogs garnered significant reader attention. We also saw that pattern reflected in our 2019 Most Engaging Stories, where live blogs during major events such as Brexit were among the top articles.
Social media as a means of engaging readers post-event
The two previous sections highlighted search optimizations as a point of emphasis before and during the election. When it comes to post-event engagement tactics, our analysis suggests that social media offers a strong opportunity as traffic picks up again in the event aftermath.
Let’s use Brexit as an example. We analyzed multiple articles and angles that covered the same topic across Google search and Facebook. We found that the coverage and subsequent audience behaviors aligned with the reader behaviors we’ve outlined thus far.
For instance, we see that the most successful stories on Facebook tend to have an emotional, rather than informative, lens. Only a few highly emotional topics, like “Regrets and anger about results,” received significant engagement via Facebook. More factual topics such as “What happens if UK votes to leave” received much more significant engagement via Google search.
Therefore, we’ve seen the benefits of experimenting around sentiment on social media versus a singular “news you can use” strategy that works well in search. This approach can help attract new audiences in the post-event phase of election coverage.
Key takeaways: Planning for election coverage traffic increases
As publishers determine their election engagement strategy, here’s some key takeaways based on our research:
1. Optimize for search sooner rather than later
Consider posting search-friendly content before the election. This way, there’s no doubt that it will be indexed by Google or any other search engine of choice. Meanwhile, review linking strategies to ensure that content is being updated or iterated upon for the best reader journey possible.
2. Lean into coverage strengths
The election will have multiple angles. Even though our research suggests that audiences tend to gravitate towards factual pieces, it shouldn’t limit publishers to a single angle on any piece of content. Give readers the unique storytelling angles and formats they can’t get anywhere else.
3. Get social when it counts
Our data suggests that social media traffic will begin to gain traction as long as 12-24 hours after the event. Consider the timing and messaging of content and invest accordingly to have the greatest differentiation and impact on that referral traffic.
When preparing for the election, or any major event for that matter, we see a clear advantage to getting ahead on pre-coverage search and post-coverage social tactics based on the reader interactions we’ve seen before and after the fact. This should also give teams time and flexibility to iterate and experiment during the event, as reader behaviors can rapidly change when it comes to the diverse audiences landing on publishers’ sites.
It’s 2020, and things have gotten to the point that we may not have the bandwidth to pay attention to all the existential threats we’re facing at once.
In March, the coronavirus pandemic reached a global scale. News organizations around the world focused their coverage on the deadly outbreak and readership reached record levels. But while all this was going on, the climate change crisis continueditssteadymarch.
News coverage is inherently limited given the resources media organizations have to allocate. And audience attention is a finite resource. So, it’s natural to worry that focus on one crisis may reduce much-needed focus on another.
However, the data show a more complicated story.
On a high level, U.S. media coverage of climate change has declined since March. Fewer new articles have been published and fewer articles are being read overall. Readership has not followed, however. In fact, the number of readers and amount of page views has not dropped off.
These patterns indicate that there is an opportunity. News publishers can expect higher-than-normal traffic for continued investment in climate change coverage.
This chart shows data from the network of Taboola’s news publisher partners. These include thousands of news websites in the U.S. They range from those belonging to large TV networks to local newspaper chains to digitally native publications and many more. Essentially, it’s a uniquely broad representation of what U.S. news consumers are reading about on the internet.
There’s a lot happening so let’s look at the lines one-by-one.
Articles read and written
The yellow line represents the number of articles consumed by U.S. readers that week which mention “climate change.” There’s a clear drop beginning several weeks before U.S. readers fully turned their attention to coronavirus, which is the green highlighted portion of the graph beginning the week of March 9.
The likely reason articles began dropping a few weeks prior is because news organizations had already begun shifting resources to coronavirus coverage. The number of articles consumed about climate change eventually drops to around 2,000 per week. That is a level below anything we saw in the previous year.
We've now seen 5 consecutive weekdays during which US traffic to news stories about coronavirus was in the 205M-225M range, so this seems like our baseline at the moment. pic.twitter.com/bZtaRrrgV7
One thing to be very clear about is that our data shows the number of articles being consumed, not the amount of new articles. The drop indicates that there are fewer new articles because news consumers tend to focus on recent updates.
We can confirm this with data from a tool built by MIT and Harvard researchers called Media Cloud. It shows the percentage of new articles per week about topics on a large selection of major U.S. news sites. Media Cloud also shows the production of articles about climate change dropped from the 1.5% – 2% range to consistently under 1% as of early March.
Coverage concerns
Before moving on, it’s worth noting that even 2% to 3% of articles likely isn’t a suitable level of coverage for something dire as climate change. Remember, this topic impacts a wide range of news topics such as public race, health, housing, income inequality, transportation, animal preservation, and much more.
In fact, hundreds of news organizations tried to address this very issue late last year when they joined together in a coordinated effort to increase climate coverage. You can see a spike in both the Taboola and Media Cloud charts in late September 2019, when the Covering Climate Now launched.
For comparison’s sake, the chart below shows what it looks like when the news media rallies its full resources to cover a topic. Significantly, more than half of the articles published—nearly 70% some weeks—mentioned coronavirus from late March until June.
Weekly readers
Returning to our original topic, let’s dig into how coronavirus affected the number of people reading about climate change.
Unlike with articles, the number of weekly readers remains relatively consistent with what we saw in the months ahead of the U.S. outbreaks.
The weekly reader count remains in the 14 million to 20 million range. It hasn’t quite reached 20 million in the past few months. But that could be seasonal as we can see the same was the case during the summer 2019 months.
These numbers align with the findings of a report published in May by researchers at Yale University and George Mason University entitled “Climate Change in the American Mind.” In the survey of Americans taken in April, the researchers found record-tying levels of acceptance that global warming is a serious problem. They also report extremely high levels of concern and interest.
As noted in a New York Times report about the research, author John Schwartz notes that this survey defies a psychological phenomenon called the “finite pool of worry.” This suggests that concern about climate change may wane amid coronavirus because people only have so much attention and energy to dedicate to crises.
Schwartz also found the research defied the expectations of other academics. University of Rhode Island environmental communications professor Sunshine Menezes commented:
“I’m excited by these findings. Taken together, the report’s findings indicate that Americans are reaching, or maybe even have reached, a turning point. They see climate change in their backyards, they recognize the unequal impacts, they increasingly recognize the urgency of adaptation measures, and they want news coverage that tackles consequences and solutions.”
Page views per week
The story for weekly page views was similar to the one for readers. The weekly totals remained relatively similar after coronavirus took over the news. We saw a range of 30 million to 50 million page views per week about climate change remain steady. If you’re an audience growth strategist for a news website, your ears should be perking up right now.
With fewer articles in circulation about climate change and a consistent audience with a consistent appetite for coverage, supply and demand suggests there’s an opportunity to take advantage of the dearth of new articles.
This chart shows how the amount of page views per article mentioning climate change has increased significantly in the coronavirus era.
“The public sees the urgency and actually wants more climate news. Even during the peak of coronavirus coverage in April, some of the world’s biggest news organizations told us that their audiences had little appetite for stories that weren’t about the virus, with one exception: climate change, which continued to generate significant traffic.”
The news topics driving audience attention look different today than they did in March. Covid-19 affected people in just about every part of their lives. Therefore, it affected the news cycle in almost every ad category.
The initial declaration of the global pandemic sparked a dramatic increase in traffic to publisher sites across the board. That traffic boom has since waned and we’re left with different audience interests.
We wanted to know exactly what those new interests look like. To do this, we dove into readership on the Taboola network of U.S. news publishers.
Taboola’s data includes audiences at more than 1,300 U.S. news websites including national, local, and digital-native organizations. The scope of the network offers a broad view of what’s capturing people’s attention. Here’s what we found:
Coronavirus continues to dominate news in almost every news category
Across all news categories, news about the global pandemic has declined. However, it still eclipses audience attention over any other topic.
Even as traffic levels out, news about the virus is still driving more traffic than other topics by almost a billion pageviews a day. And it’s likely to stick around.
Finance, Business and Industrial, & Real Estate
As the stock market fell, news audiences interested in finance, business, and real estate rushed to learn about investment opportunities, hear advice from the experts, and purchase shares.
Money management advice and the news about the real estate market—specifically whether or not it was a good time to buy or sell a home—came in after investment topics.
Society issues
Recent protests and events related to racism and the Black community in the U.S .have led to a surge in traffic regarding social institutions, racism, and crime.
These topics previously drove traffic for news sites. However, other topics like work, dating, and the impact of the Coronavirus on our society and wellbeing had been at the forefront.
The impact of Coronavirus created a surge in traffic around May, as states began to roll out plans for re-opening, marked in red in the graph above.
Science, Computing & Technology
Even when they’re staying inside, news audiences still want to hear about the weather. They are specifically interested in major weather events like tornadoes and storm clusters.
Recent news about internet technology companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have also captured their attention. They triggered an entirely new surge in traffic beginning in May, as these companies grapple with how to manage political content on their platforms.
It’s also worth noting that news related to new releases of mobile phones, personal computers, and other consumer technology continues to drive traffic for publishers.
Family and Parenting, Pets, & Home and Garden
For families, Coronavirus meant educating children at home, and in some cases, taking care of them during the workday. In tandem, for many people quarantine provided an opportunity to adopt pets, leading to an increase in traffic for topics related to pet care.
Shopping, Style & Fashion
Fashion companies really had to adapt as sales dropped and strategies shifted. Audiences are focused on clothing specifically, and the impact that the global pandemic will have on those brands.
They’re also tuned in to news related to big retailers. In particular, how their businesses are faring the recession, and whether or not they have plans for re-opening.
Arts & Entertainment
People’s plans to keep busy were entirely digital. And many publisher audiences were interested in the fate of the shows and events they could no longer attend.
Around May, those topics became just as interesting as news about movies and TV shows, a big source of entertainment for people in lockdown.
It’s worth noting the two gaping holes missing from these graphs. Sports and travel news cycles were entirely interrupted as both industries ground to a halt.
While some of these trends are specific to events in the recent months, others could impact publisher news cycles long-term. Keeping a pulse on the topics that engage news readers will continue to serve news publishers in increasing both engagement and traffic with their content.
Reader interest in coronavirus content has begun to wane. In fact, since March 30, we’ve seen traffic to Covid-19 articles is down nearly 25%.
As Covid-19 fatigue sets in, we wondered how audiences would interact with non-coronavirus content. Therefore, we looked to past data on highly-engaging content to find insights that may help inform content strategy in our near future.
Do readers spend more time with great content? Yes
We began by analyzing content with the Top 100 articles with the highest engagement from last year (otherwise known as our Most Engaging Stories) against articles published in 2019 with at least 10,000 pageviews*. That data was then compared to our findings on coronavirus and non-coronavirus engagement (as of April 3 of this year) to get a glimpse of what to expect from readers moving forward. Here’s what we found.
For starters, the Top 100 articles of 2019 had a much higher Average Engaged Time compared to the others we analyzed, as we see below.
We’ll narrow this finding to two hypotheses. The first is that the majority of these articles are simply longer, and therefore command more of the reader’s time. The second is that they’re actually more engaging, with audiences actively reading longer.
When we add our Engaged Time data to the mix, it suggests the latter. Readers placed a higher value on this content, or understandably, spent more time with the captivating pieces when you account for scroll and click behavior. Audiences spent an average of more than two-and-a-half minutes (141 seconds) with the Top Stories compared to an average of about 39 seconds with articles that had more than 10,000 pageviews.
Compare this to our latest data on coronavirus-related and non-coronavirus articles, which found readers spent an average of 40 seconds and 36 seconds, respectively, with articles that had far more pageviews (>800,000 since January).
Therefore, while coronavirus content has understandably drawn the world’s attention, it still doesn’t come close to the Engaged Time we saw for high quality journalism last year.
Why this matters to publishing and media organizations
Content creators will likely feel validated by these findings. In fact, some publications have made it a focus to produce fewer, yet more substantial, pieces in lieu of cranking out lightning fast content. When it comes to being a more engaging piece of content, those efforts appear to be rewarded.
Is social media a factor in non-coronavirus engagement? We think so
We also saw that the Top 100 articles from last year have much higher proportions of referrals from search and social channels. This suggests that their offsite success contributed to their higher Engaged Minutes tally.
The data also shows that, in general, the Top 100 articles had higher search traffic as a percentage of total pageviews, as shown below.
In comparison, our long-term findings have shown that once critical information is widely known, traffic begins to decline, particularly in search. This finding was supported by our newest data on referrals to coronavirus content, as shown here:
Why this matters to publishing and media organizations
While “going viral” isn’t necessarily the goal for writers and their publishers, the popularity of the Top 100 stories with audiences from external platforms had a sustained impact on engagement. We see that organic channels (i.e. getting the eyes of multiple outlets or social media readers) was significant to the Total Engaged Minutes of these pieces. As coronavirus coverage slows down, these attributes can signal a return to the engagement norm.
Can engaging pieces attract more loyal or new readers? Our findings say yes
In our analysis of new versus loyal visitors, we found that the Top 100 have higher proportions of new visitors. The data suggests that these more engaging articles manage to transcend a site’s typical audience and draw new readers’ interest.
Why this matters to publishing and media organizations
This should also come as good news to media and publishing as they look to transition to non-coronavirus content, all while maintaining the strong traffic momentum from the past few months.
Today’s digital publishers are also as focused on retention as they are on acquisition, especially when it comes to generating reader-driven revenue. In this instance, we see an engaging story as a chance to introduce new readers to content. It also presents a better opportunity to create returning (i.e., loyal) audiences that will read more than a single article.
What to make of a post-coronavirus content world: Our takeaways
Overall, our data suggests that highly engaging stories will display certain qualities as readership (and production of) coronavirus-related content declines. Those included:
A higher Average Engaged Time among readers
Greater search and social media referral traffic
New visitors (a possible benefit from the aforementioned social media boost)
What does this mean for content creators trying to recreate the positive impact of an engaging piece of content moving forward?
Longform still has a place, but isn’t the only distinguishing factor for the most engaging reads. Audiences made more time for long, captivating narratives.
The Top 100 stories we analyzed were given a boost by search and social media, whether on the backs of their organizations or influential readers that elevated them. Good practices across SEO, promotion and re-promotion are key to maintaining momentum for prolonged periods.
Engaging pieces are not just for loyal readers. Content creators can use these marquee pieces to attract new visitors as well. One way to attract new audiences is by leveraging a wider set of platforms (such as mobile aggregators) where your content’s quality will also command a high level of attention.
*A note from our Data Science team on engagement methodology:
The plot above shows the distribution of Average Engaged Times for the two groups of stories, normalized so that the total area under the distribution curve equals 1.0. We see that about 40% of the Average Engaged Times for stories in the Top 100 group take values greater than 150 seconds, while almost none of the stories in the other group have an Average Engaged Time greater than 150 seconds.
We can interpret this to mean that the probability a Top Story has an Average Engaged Time greater than 150 seconds is about 0.40, while the probability a story with 10K+ page views has more than 150 seconds Average Engaged Time is practically zero. If we take the average of each small bin of Average Engaged Times weighted by the probability that the Average Engaged Time falls within the range of the bin, we can get the mean Averaged Engaged Time for each group.
Comments for news organizations’ digital publications took a blow when NPR closed its online comments section in 2016. Even before NPR’s monumental decision, other organizations including The Verge, Reuters, and Recode had also bid adieu to online comments. The feature was increasingly viewed as an incubator for name-calling, insults, and sometimes harassment. And the trend continues. In just the past year, USA Today and OregonLive added their names to the growing list of news outlets that have had enough of supervising online trolls and bots.
Comments definitely don’t always bring out the best in people. Some commenters use the shield of anonymity to share derogatory and abusive messages, communicate hate toward certain racial groups, or turn a constructive discussion into a name-calling match. And negative comments can even influence readers to have a more unfavorable view of the story itself.
Some national and regional newsrooms have employed comment moderators, but monitoring thousands of comments requires considerable labor. The task of deleting uncivil comments oy leads to emotional exhaustion for the moderators. However it turns out that deleting the litany of racist, sexist, and hompophobic comments also decreases trust in the news organization, according to a 2019 Center for Media Engagement study. While comments sections once held the promise of democratizing news discussions, that optimism seems to have backfired.
The death of comments may be exaggerated
Is this the beginning of a slow dive into obsolescence for comment sections?
Coral helps moderators identify disruptive comments and surface the best submissions.
Not necessarily. Despite the woeful forecast from some commentators about the death of comments sections, experts who study reader engagement warn critics against hasty obituaries. The number of news organizations that have done away with comments sections do not represent the industry as a whole, says Andrew Losowsky, head of Coral by Vox Media, a system that aims to bring publishers and journalists closer to their communities.
In fact, comments sections can bring great value that often goes overlooked. Done right, comments sections can increase reader loyalty and engagement, and even boost subscriptions. Simply deleting comments sections, Losowsky says, makes sense when those sections turn into vitriolic spaces. But he says this move can also be “incredibly short-sighted.”
The key for news organizations is to develop a strategy. News outlets should think of their comments sections more deliberately. The need to ask questions like: What does it mean to involve people in the conversation? And, what sort of conversations do news organizations want to foster? From there, news organizations can ask pointed questions for readers to answer in the comments sections.
Managing the unmanageable
One way to make handling the volume of comments more manageable is by implementing artificial intelligence to help with the task of comment moderation. The New York Times is one outlet that actually expanded its comments section in 2017, with a machine learning technology called Moderator, which helps to moderate up to 12,000 comments a day. The technology scores each comment based on whether a human staffer might reject it based on inflammatory or inappropriate behavior. It then decides whether to keep or delete the comment based on that score.
Local news organizations, however, often lack the resources of larger sites. With revenues falling for smaller outlets, securing funding to implement a comments moderation system — much less hiring an employee specifically to moderate comments — might land quite far down the priority list.
Innovating with engagement
The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina has found that its Coral commenters are more engaged.
That doesn’t mean some local news sites aren’t experimenting with their own initiatives, though. The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, which has a daily readership of around 270,000, implemented Coral about nine months ago. The platform uses AI to detect and remove toxic comments. Commenters at The State also need to sign into and register their email addresses to Coral separately from their subscriptions. This means that Coral users tend to be more engaged.
“We still see some of the bluster and posturing that can be negative in comments. But by and large, the comments that we do get are a lot more focused on the actual story,” said Cal Lundmark, southeast audience growth editor for McClatchy.
In addition to more constructive comments, general engagement on The State’s website flourished for Coral users. Active Coral commenters read twice as many stories on The State’s website per visit compared to other subscribers.These visitors spend almost 16 minutes longer on the site per visit as well.
Interaction breeds civility
When journalists interact with commenters, they can actually encourage civility in the comments sections, according to a report from the Democracy Fund and the Engaging News Project, now known as the Center for Media Engagement. The study found that journalists who answer reader questions and participate in discussions make the tone of comments sections more constructive.
It is effective even when local reporters only have enough time to dip into the comments sections rather than engage regularly. It “creates a sort of bond between the reader and the news organization, where people feel less okay to say nasty things,” says Gina M. Masullo, associate director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.
Reporters at The State have been doing exactly this as part of the recent initiative to re-strategize the comments section. “The time in their day when they can really just stop and say ‘I can respond to some comments’ is pretty limited,” Lundmark said. “So it does take teamwork… between the audience team and the reporters themselves.”
In addition, news organizations can benefit from highly “person-centered” messages, according to Masullo’s research at the Center. These are comments from journalists that acknowledge a commenter’s anger, but also ask the commenter to keep their language civil.
“It worked across three different experiments that we did,” Masullo said. “I think it’s because even people who are angry like when somebody validates that they have a right to be angry.”
Social media, mediated
For the news organizations that have deleted comments sections over the past few years, engaging with their audiences is far from dead. In its one year update after doing away with its comments sections, NPR’s public editor Elizabeth Jensen declared the move a success. She cited other ways of communicating with readers such as newsletters as garnering more attention. Journalists respond to readers and listeners through social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, Jensen wrote, and discussions also remain civil in closed Facebook groups.
Plus, it makes sense to take the conversation to social media if the community already regularly engages there, says Lynn Walsh, assistant director of Trusting News.
“We have to be realistic: Are people going to log into the website to comment when they may not already be engaging there actively?” Wash said. So, maybe “we should reach people by going to where they already are instead of asking them to come to us.”
But Losowsky warns against relying too much on social media to foster discussion.
“What you’re saying is that your engagement with your most loyal and engaged users belongs to a third party that you cannot control. And that data and that relationship belongs to them,” Losowsky said. “So if you say instead we will let Facebook manage this, then Facebook owns that relationship with your readers. You do not own it, they do. And they control it.”
Positive comments
So what does the future hold for comments and will news organizations abandon comments sections while reaching out to readers on other channels? Or will they attempt to take on the challenge of molding comments sections into places for constructive feedback?
Research continues to explore how to make comments sections into constructive spaces. Maite Taboada at Simon Fraser University, for instance, is working on a system to identify constructive comments that news organizations can highlight to create civil dialogue. And innovative organizations like Hearken develop different ways to tune into to readers and commenters, in addition to making listening to communities a fundamental directive in the reporting process.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we will make the internet a better space,” Masullo said. “It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s gonna be a combination of human and technological solutions. But I don’t think we should just say, ‘oh you know, this is a dismal mess and there’s no hope.’ Because I really think there is.”
We’ve
just returned from our annual summit where a couple hundred senior
executives gather in a closed-door meeting to discuss the most pressing
issues and exciting opportunities that we, as an industry, have before
us. It was my sixth year of having the honor of setting the table to
open the executive summit, after more than a dozen years listening from
the audience.
Everyone in the room is a premium publisher – with the exception of
a handful of supporting sponsors, speakers, and invited guests. The
attendees at the DCN Next: Summit are among the most knowledgeable
people in the business of digital media anywhere. It is a daunting task
to capture the proper sentiment for the direction of our industry at a
gathering of such key leaders. That said, here are the main points from
my kickoff remarks this year.
This new year also marks the start of a new decade, 2020.
2020.
Yes, perfect vision. Optimal focus. As we begin this decade, I believe
that DCN’s members are uniquely positioned. As a group focused on
creating premium content experiences, we have never lost sight of the
importance of our audiences. We’ve remained steadfast in their trust and
our direct relationships.
I see three key facets to this 2020 vision:
First,
we find ourselves rightly renewing our resolution to put the
expectations of our audiences first. To meet, to exceed, their
expectations. To be their trusted ally.
Second, we’ve defeated the myth content has to
be free and finally defined what it means to be premium. It simply
means to have real value worth paying for whether by distributors or
consumers.
Third,
given too many years of platform dominance – in which they have
indiscriminately hidden the real costs to their services and vacuumed up
as much consumer data as possible while, at times abusing trust – we
find ourselves in the best position to align with new user expectations.
To believe that data is the lifeblood of the Internet is to look past
the trust and audience expectations which underpin it now, and in the
future.
Audience first
Unlike
some of those who seek to cravenly capitalize on consumer attention
merely to collect data and target ads, we celebrate an unwavering focus
on the wants, needs, and expectations of our audiences. The experience
across platforms can be rich and elegant. But even more importantly,
digital allows us to use multimedia to tell stories in ever more
engaging ways, better informing the public – something that has never
been more important.
In this case bringing it altogether, I’d like to point to the brilliant Wall Street Journal report
on Google’s ad tech business. It informed a public conversation and
made its way not just across the industry but into meetings of
regulators investigating Google – this is true impact in journalism.
Storytelling at its best
As
technology enables us to better tell our stories, it also becomes more
deeply embedded and entwined with every aspect of our audiences’ lives. The New York Times 1619 Project
was one amazing example featured at a DCN Storytelling Member Day. It
not only brilliantly told the story; it reexamined the legacy of slavery
and made its way into other media – not just audio and video but it
also found its rightful place in classrooms and libraries as educational
material – this is true impact in journalism.
Revenue revived
The past couple of years have been particularly promising around subscription-based and other Direct-to-consumer (DTC) models. While ad vendors chase “DTC”, the latest acronym in their alphabet soup, DCN’s members have always focused on direct, trusted relationships with their audiences.
While concerns have loomed around subscription fatigue, recent DCN research
found the opposite. In fact, consumers aren’t even aware how much they
are spending on subscription products. (DCN’s research shows an average
of $54 per month across 4.3 products). So, it’s clear there’s room for
more! And we now see that younger audiences who grew up in digital are
willing to pay for satisfying experiences. The DCN research backs this
up showing that they see value well beyond their cost.
As
we build our subscription-based offerings, and optimize ad experiences
across platforms, we must keep these audience experiences top of mind.
We serve neither our audiences, nor advertising partners, if we do any
less.
Video views
Our
members – and the industry as a whole – are seeing a hearty appetite
for audio and video content. We see robust revenue around licensing of
our content and IP, which also allows us to impact ever widening
audiences. This is backed up by a renewed effort to preserve copyright
over their art, notably including last year in the EU.
We are also seeing true diversification in our busiess models.
Where
desktop display eroded over the past years, mobile display has offset
it. And other forms of advertising including native, sponsored content
and leads have helped drive growth. Video advertising, where inventory
can be created, continues to carry the highest price and growth in
advertising. And arguably the most important growth of all, we’re
seeing direct audience revenues grow more than 20% per year where
content companies are being paid directly for their content recognizing
its premium value.
UBS
estimates that a combination of 16 media firms will spend $100 billion
to produce content in 2020. In fact, it has been predicted that more
than $35 billion will be spent on streaming video content alone. And
with over 60 media companies among the DCN membership, we know that the
total investment will be much higher. And rightly so. Hulu has been
investing in premium content for its streaming video platform. So is CBS
All Access. Disney+ launched in the last few months with an absolutely gorgeous experience. Peacock will launch in April and then HBO MAX a month later. And those are only a few examples.
Engaging experiences
While
we continue to monitor the power of platforms, their own investment in
content demonstrates that information and entertainment are the
lifeblood of social experiences online. And now the platforms are
starting to pay for it. No
DCN member is surprised that film, television, news, sports and other
topics engage audiences and ignite conversation, debate, and discussion
across platforms.
Be
it delivered on the big screen, small screens, smart speakers, or the
myriad delivery channels in the digital content ecosystem, the work our
members do forms a nexus of cultural impact. We have reached new heights
of digital storytelling. And, undoubtedly our craft, the art of
storytelling, will continue to surprise and delight as its evolution
continues in the decade to come.
And,
while we face challenges like broad-swath and blunt keyword
blacklisting masquerading as “brand safety” and the ease of data-driven
scale, we also see signs that marketers too are shifting their focus to
quality contexts and making genuine customer connections.
Yes,
it is “easier” to pull a series of data-driven levers and reach
purportedly targeted audiences with generic messaging. However, as a
growing number of consumers opt out of advertising and intro tracking
prevention, savvy marketers too are reviving the art of storytelling.
They have a renewed understanding of the power of delivering compelling
messages in trusted, engaging, inspiring environments and an
appreciation for the cost to their brand when it’s associated with
experiences that abuse customers’ expectations. They see that being part
of exceptional experiences creates the kind of cultural resonance and
relevance that a click cannot compare to.
Data diligence
Don’t
get me wrong. Certainly, data is a powerful tool for understanding
audiences. It is also critical for storytelling and we see it leveraged
in stunning executions to create vivid narratives built on numbers.
But
user expectations around data collection and use are of critical
concern. With increasing consumer awareness around data practices online
and looming enforcement when they’re abused, we must continue to focus
in on what’s best for our audiences and only then for our marketing
partners. The ability to micro-target, to force an action with a digital
ad is not the same as engaging audiences around trusted content. It is not the way to build long-term customer relationships.
Fans and friction
It
up to us to keep our customer focus razor sharp as we embark on this
2020 vision. We need to minimize complexity and reduce friction while
continuing to innovate and enhance experiences for our audiences.
Certainly, challenges abound including news deserts impacting local
communities, anti-press rhetoric from none other than our own President which sends dangerous signals globally, and continued platform competition and unequitable marketplace control now under investigation by Congress, FTC, DOJ, states, the EU among others.
I’m feeling good this year about where things are headed. I’m feeling really good. And I’m thrilled at the programming lineup we assembled for our annual summit to talk about it.
What
I’ve seen in my time in digital, particularly the years I’ve been
fortunate enough to spend on the team at DCN, has taught me is that we
are at the forefront of something great here. We are on the frontlines
of storytelling and communication. We have the power to shape minds, to
touch hearts, to fill the world with laughter and tears. Here’s to 2020
bringing the roar of the crowd as we focus on what matters most: the
audiences we serve.
There’s a blackhole in the video game universe. A massive, bare chest Jeff Goldblum is lounging on a London lawn near a bridge. And the golden arches have inverted.
Surely some sort of revelation is at hand!
Oh no wait: It’s just brands going viral.
Inspired by Fortnite’s bold strategy of taking the massively popular game offline for nearly two days to tee up the release of a new virtual world, we decided to investigate several so-called “publicity stunts” to see which ones were the most impactful in generating reader engagement.
To do this, we checked how these campaigns impacted readership about the companies on the Taboola network of news publishers. We’ve seen that successful marketing can often generate significant news coverage and create a viral effect.
Taboola’s data include readership of more than 1,300 US news websites including national, local, and digital-native organizations. The scope of the network offers a broad view of what’s capturing people’s attention.
With that in mind, let’s see which stunts sparked the biggest spikes.
The Fortnite black hole
Fortnite has become one of the rare titles of this generation to transcend gaming to become a cultural phenomenon. Its player base has expanded into the hundreds of millions over the past two years.
Naturally, people totally freaked out when the game’s universe was sucked into a black hole leaving behind only a dark screen and a cryptic string of numbers.
“It then, to the internet’s collective shock, stayed that way. Confused players joined forces to decode mysterious numbers, play a hidden minigame, entertain themselves with speculation, and spend more than 35 hours staring at what basically amounts to a screensaver.”
Haven't been keeping up with Fortnite? Well, good news, you haven't missed much—except, oh right, the whole game is a black hole now? It's probably fine. pic.twitter.com/zzwqQW5yYl
It didn’t take long for people to realize that this was the game’s way of teasing the beginning of a new season and the introduction of a new world for players to shoot to control.
In the meantime, millions of people read news articles about the phenomenon. We saw readership spike more than 10x above its daily average.
International house of what now?
Who doesn’t love IHOP? The food is decadent. The blue roof is iconic. And “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity” is honestly one of the all-time great names for a menu item.
You could invert three of the letters in IHOP and not a thing would change. But when the company inverted that fourth letter, a great mystery ensued.
IHOP is changing its name to IHOB and while people think it stands for “breakfast” I’m putting my money on BETRAYAL
After several days of anticipation, “IHOb” revealed the b stands for burgers because, yes, they also serve burgers. A month later, IHOP admitted the supposed name change was a gimmick all along.
Readers seemed to find the gag palatable. Traffic spiked like an 8-year-old’s energy level after eating IHOP pancakes with blueberry syrup.
WcDonald’s
IHOP isn’t the only food chain to cause a stir by inverting its branding. A McDonald’s in California flipped the golden arches in honor of International Women’s Day and the company changed its logo on its social media channels to match.
McDonald’s said this gesture was meant to recognize “the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere and especially in our restaurants.”
(Credit: McDonald’s)
We saw increased readership about McDonald’s related to this move. But it was not necessarily a triumph of publicity. The gesture received harsh backlash as people criticized the company for the wages it pays its workers.
Payless pranks influencers
Fashion influencers flocked to Palessi’s popup shop in Santa Monica, California, to sip champagne and try on shoes listed for up to $1,800. The line to get in extended well out the door. Photos were posted to Instagram.
No one suspected the supposed luxury kicks normally sell for as low as $20 until discount retailer Payless ShoeSource revealed it was behind the entire production.
Well played, Payless.
The farce earned a big bump in readership for the company. Unfortunately, the spike was overshadowed a few months later by the news that Payless was imminently closing all of its US locations.
The electric car company was able to pull off this extraterrestrial feat because of its association with SpaceX (since Elon Musk founded both companies).
So when SpaceX needed to show off the capabilities of its Falcon Heavy rocket during a 2018 launch, it brought along the Tesla as the payload to add some extra flare to the event.
How epic was this stunt? Business Insider’s Mark Matousek wrote, “Tesla created the world’s best car commercial without spending a dime on advertising.”
Both companies saw significant bumps in readership around this event.
Pizza and potholes
Most of us likely have experienced the utter disappointment of receiving a pizza from a delivery person, only to open the box and see a pie that looks like it’s reached us via a carnival ride.
Domino’s created its “Paving for Pizza” campaign aimed, perhaps symbolically, to address this issue by fixing potholes in towns across the US. In theory, this would create a smoother ride for their delivery people.
A road condition meter on the website promoting the campaign shows the supposed carnage various degrees of road disrepair wreak on pizza.
This campaign did not see the same type of traffic spike as the others. When it launched in June 2018, there were a number of stories that caused a small bump in activity as indicated by the red arrow in the chart below.
It’s possible this campaign had more of a slow burn effect though. It seemed to create increasing buzz at the local level as it expanded to new towns.
And despite the lack of readership at launch, there were a number of positives. PRWeek highlighted the campaign’s success on social media. It also covered the sheer number of requests the company received from towns that wanted to be part of the program, which included over 15,000 zip codes.
Sex sells, but at what cost?
Your scientists marketers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
If the advertising maxim “sex sells” is true, then this one might be the new gold(blum) standard. See for yourself.
25-foot Jeff Goldblum statue pops up in London, England, recreating the actor's famous bare chest pose from "Jurassic Park" in honor of the film's 25th anniversary. https://t.co/3sTSdzw5Uapic.twitter.com/DQlGYRhVGc
The British streaming platform Now TV was behind this monumental stunt.
Unlike the other companies we’ve discussed so far, we didn’t actually see a spike for now Now TV when measuring readership in the UK. Taboola’s semantic AI looks for terms in headlines and the first few paragraphs of a story to categorize them into topics. Since Jeff Goldblum is such a big star, most of the story headlines about the statue gave him top billing and mentioned that it was organized by Now TV deeper in the stories.
With this in mind, we also looked at news stories about Jeff Goldblum and did find a bump in readership when the statue first appeared. As you can see below, it wasn’t the biggest Jeff Goldblum news of the past two years. That honor went to the revelation that Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill would all appear in the next “Jurassic World.”
The competition is fierce for the attention of readers and customers.
The stunts that not only successfully garnered “earned” media for brands but also significant audiences for those media sites can be categorized into three themes: providing a public service or pushing for social good (Domino’s/McDonalds), generating intrigue (Fortnite/IHOP/Payless), or creating a spectacle (Tesla/NowTV).
The successful stunts for brands were the ones that best aligned with their public image. A lighthearted brand like IHOP with playfully named menu items can get away with shenanigans if it’s all in good fun. While Tesla and SpaceX, both known for being on the cutting-edge of technology, took those reputations to the next level with the space car stunt.
Journalists have the important responsibility of giving readers context about these stunts and holding brands accountable when their plays for attention miss the mark. However, when done right, these stunts not only deliver significant PR, they drive interest and traffic for media companies as well.
Note: Taboola’s news publisher partners have access to data on trending topics in the Topic Insights part of Newsroom, a real-time audience analytics platform. There’s also a publicly available version of Topic Insights on the Taboola Trends page.
Taboola is always looking for interesting ways to use data to help bring context to how news readers are interacting with real-world events such as measuring which presidential candidates are getting the most attention and measuring the huge impact of a coordinated media effort to increase climate change coverage. Please DM @franberkman on Twitter if you’re doing any research or reporting that you think this type of data could help support.
