Audience Building in the Age of Platforms: ONA 2016

Audience Building in the

Age of PlatformsJosh Schwartz, Chartbeat

@joshuadschwartz

September 17, 2016 #ONA16CB

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INTRODUCTION

This talk

■ Traffic from platforms over time

■ Where and when people are reading

■ How platforms change what content people read

■ Audience loyalty...and plenty of time for questions

PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC

Across our network

■ Over 75% of external, non-dark traffic comes from the top 5 referrers

Exceptions

■ Pinterest drives as much as 15–20% of external traffic to Fashion, Decor, and Food sites

■ LinkedIn drives as much as 10–15% of traffic to Business sites 4

PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC

Despite algorithm changes, total traffic driven by platforms has been constant over the last year

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PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC

Despite algorithm changes, total traffic driven by platforms has been constant over the last year

...but at a site level, individual sites have seen an average 74% variance in Facebook traffic between their best and worst months

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CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

Facebook-referred traffic is nearly all mobile. Google is roughly an even split.

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CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

And time of day is very different

Facebook peaks at night. Google is steady throughout the day.

CONTENT DIFFERENCES

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What we search for is nearly limitless, whereas social sharing is much more narrow

CONTENT DIFFERENCES

Except during breaking news, where search and social have very similar profiles

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CONTENT DIFFERENCES

During breaking news, search traffic often reacts even more quickly than social traffic

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CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

Three types of search:

■ Evergreen

■ Direct / branded search

■ New stories

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CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

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AMP traffic, though, is much more news-heavy

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CONTENT DIFFERENCES

The perspectives of what we write about, what we search for, and what we share are completely different

AUDIENCE LOYALTY

On large sites, direct visitors are more than twice as likely to return as other visitors

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AUDIENCE LOYALTY

Facebook traffic varies in loyalty by type of site:

■ Non-English sites, and many sports sites, have much higher loyalty than traditional news and lifestyle sites

■ Larger social audiences are less loyal

Search topics that bring new visitors who come back in the next week:

■ Highest performers (>10%)

▸ Non-English sites

▸ Tech content on tech sites

▸ Political content on polarized sitesAiles coverage on left-leaning sites, Clinton Foundation coverage on right-leaning sites

■ Lowest performers (<6%)▸ Commodity viral news

(e.g. Ryan Lochte)▸ Harambe

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Search visitors vary significantly in loyalty depending on the content they land on

AUDIENCE LOYALTY

■ Algorithm changes have had minimal effects on Facebook traffic on the whole, but many publishers have seen wild traffic fluctuations

■ The set of pages getting search traffic is vastly more diverse than those getting social traffic

■ Social traffic concentrates on emotional stories

■ There are significant variations in audience loyalty between platforms

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CONCLUSION

■ Algorithm changes have had minimal effects on Facebook traffic on the whole, but many publishers have seen wild traffic fluctuations

■ The set of pages getting search traffic is vastly more diverse than those getting social traffic

■ Social traffic concentrates on emotional stories, search on informational stories

■ There are significant variations in audience loyalty between platforms

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Questions?

Josh Schwartzjosh@chartbeat.com@joshuadschwartzpress@chartbeat.com

CONCLUSION