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What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?New Actionable Insights and Best Practices for Publishers
IntroductionOver the past decade there has been drastic advancements and changes in the publishing industry. With the expansion of social media platforms, new variations of content distribution methods, and an endless amount of content formats, publishers have to work harder than ever to get a reader’s attention.
At Polar, we are dedicated to the publishing industry and recognize these growing pain points. We work extensively to ensure publishers get the attention and recognition they deserve by providing a technology solution that aims to grown premium publisher’s revenue and branded content business.
We recently sat down with a number of premium publishers from around the globe to discuss content and creative best practices. As a result, we decided to examine our own aggregate performance data to find new insights for driving more clicks to branded content. We extensively reviewed data from a variety of the world’s leading premium publishers, such as Condé Nast, Gannett, Oath, News Corp and The Telegraph.
Headlines are the single most important part of getting eyeballs to your branded content, whether it’s custom, editorial, sponsored, or video. Headlines are the gateway to your content and it’s what makes the reader hungry to find out more. The following best practices represent a detailed look at global aggregate headline performance data from the world’s leading premium publishers. Our goal was to better understand what attributes affect a headline’s click-through rates (CTR) by analyzing characters, words and phrases.
*Please note, this research represents the aggregate performance data from our sample. We are not recommending a “one size fits all”, in that the benefit of branded content is building experiences that are relevant to your voice, tone, platform and environment for your audiences.
2
Introduction
A B C DE F G HI J K L M
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Key Takeaways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Section 1: Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Character Length. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Special Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Section 2: Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Headline Word Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Topics & Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Positive Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Negative Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
First Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Section 3: Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Two Word Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Three Word Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Starting Two Word Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
About Polar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
Table of Contents
MethodologyWe looked at the performance data for over 10,627 unique headlines
promoting branded content through our platform by publishers from
January to August 2017.
Our goal was to better understand what attributes improved or hurt
click-through rates. Each headline had to have been promoted at least
10,000 times to be included in this research.
All attributes such as a bigram or special character had to have been
used in at least 25 headlines and by at least two different publishers to
be factored into the performance ranking.
Sentiment analysis lexicon was sourced from Bing Liu and
collaborators.
https://www.cs.uic.edu/~liub/FBS/sentiment-analysis.html
4
Methodology
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
5
Key TakeawaysKey Takeaways
Longer Headlines Improve CTR .Median CTR improves when headlines have
more words and characters. Performance peaks at 90-99 characters and 15-16 words in length.
Include Words That Relate To Your Topic .Including keywords that relate to the content’s topic helps to grab the reader’s attention and
desire to click.
Use Numbers And Special Characters .CTR performance improves when numbers and special characters ($, !, &, ?) are used in a
headline.
‘If It Bleeds It Leads’ Is Not Always True .After looking at both positive and negative words, the median CTR improves when there are positive
words in a headline.
A
B C 1 2 3 $ ! & ?
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
A a When it comes to writing headlines there are many factors to keep in mind, with one of the main ones being character selection and length. If headlines are made of words, and words are made of characters, one could argue that characters are the key ingredient to a headlines success. However, there is more to characters than one might think. In this section we will cover the use of characters, including character length, special characters and numbers.
6
SECTION 1
CHARACTERSA
C
E e
a
c
B
D
F
b
d
f
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
7
Character LengthCharacter Length
10-19 Characters In Length
50-59 Characters In Length
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
80-89 Characters In Length
8
Character LengthCharacter Length
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the number of characters used in a headline. Characters are represented by groups of 10.
Description
With headline character length the trend is clear, more characters lead to stronger CTR performance.
This trend is also inline with headline word length, which also suggests more words lead to better peformance.
Key Insights
0 .12%
0 .16% 0 .17% 0 .16%
0 .20%0 .23%
0 .28%
0 .33%
0 .43%
Number of Characters
Med
ian
CTR
10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
9
Spcial Character$pecial Char@cters!
Special Character (!)
Special Character ($)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
10
Special Characters$pecial Char@cters!
The following plots out CTR performance based on the use of special characters used in a headline. Special characters are symbols that are not letters or numbers.
Description
Can special characters impact CTR performance? Absolutely. Based on the headlines analyzed, using a dollar sign ($) or an exclamation mark (!) has a positive effect on CTR.
Using the “and” symbol (&) or a question mark (?) does not necessarily have a negative impact on CTR, however, there’s no clear positive trends when compared to our benchmarks.
Key Insights
$CTR 0.36%
!CTR 0.29%
?CTR 0.20%
&CTR 0.18%
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
11
Numbers (Numeral)Numbers (Numeral)
Top Number (4)
Worst Number (10)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
12
NumbersNumbersTop Numbers (Shown As A Numeral)
0 .26%0 .25%
0 .24%0 .23% 0 .23% 0 .23%
0 .20%0 .19%
Number
Med
ian
CTR
4 9 3 7 5 6 8 10
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the use of numbers in a headline.
Description
When using numbers in a headline, consider using 4, 9, or 3 as these had the strongest median CTRs.
Key Insights
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
13
Numbers (Spelled Out)Numbers (Spelled Out)
Top Numbers (Three)
Top Numbers (Six)
Top Numbers (Eight)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
14
NumbersNumbers
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the use of spelled out numbers used in a headline.
Description
Generally speaking, numbers perform better when shown as a numeral, rather than spelled out.
Six’ was the top performing spelled out number, but one of the worst performing when represented as a numeral.
Key Insights
Top Numbers (Shown As Spelled Out)
Number
Med
ian
CTR
Six Four Five Three One Seven Two Eight
0 .23%0 .22% 0 .22%
0 .21%0 .20%
0 .19%0 .18%
0 .13%
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
15
NumbersNumbers
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the use of even and odd numbers used in a headline.
Description
Our research has confirmed that odd numbers perform better than even, however, not by a large margin.
You are better focusing on specific number performance than higher-level factors such as even or odd.
Key Insights
Even & Odd Numbers
Even 0.20%
0.23%Odd
Med
ian C
TR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
A a The selection and use of words is one of the mostimportant aspects of creating a successful headline and thus, a successful campaign. Words in themselves are merely tags to identify certain objects, ideas, actions or characteristics and play a massive role in the way readers see, feel, and interact with your content. In a world full of content, it’s vital that you take the time to properly craft headlines with words that matter.
In this section, we will dive deeper into the use of specific words in a headline and how they can directly impact CTR, we’ll examine headline word length, topics and categories, word sentiment and much more.
16
SECTION 2
WORDS word /wərd/a single distinct meaningful element of
speech or writing, used with others (or
sometimes alone) to form a sentence and
typically shown with a space on either
side when written or printed.
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
17
Headline Word LengthHeadline Word Length
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
Word Length (4)
Word Length (12)
Word Length (16)
Headline Word LengthHeadline Word Length
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the number of words used in a headline.
Description
Number of Words
Med
ian
CTR
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
0 .14%0 .16% 0 .17% 0 .16% 0 .17%
0 .19%0 .21% 0 .21%
0 .26%
0 .22%
0 .26%
0 .29%
0 .33%
CTR performance increases when headline word length is 16 words long. Headlines with more than 16 words decreased in CTR as fewer publishers used more than 16 words. The reality is most ad formats are not big enough to show more words.
Avoid short headlines - CTR performance was weak when headline word length was 4-8 words long.
Key Insights
18
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
0 .29%
0 .28%
0 .28%
0 .27%
0 .25%
0 .24%
0 .24%
0 .23%
0 .21%
0 .21%
0 .19%
0 .18%
Hobbies
Body, Fitness & Health
Education
Family & Relationships
Date, Place, & Time
Business & Finance
Food
Technology
Countries & Cities
Travel
Sports
Location & Places
Topics and CategoriesTopics and Categories
Individual words were grouped into a specific category based on different topics, such as hobbies or food. The chart plots out the aggregate median CTR for the different word categories.
Description
Median CTR
Top
ics
and
Cat
ego
ries
19
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
20
Hobbies and Body, Fitness & Hobbies and Body, Fitness & Health
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to hobbies and body, fitness, & health.
Description
Including ‘woman’ in a headline increases CTR performance.
Key Insights
Hobbies Body, Fitness & Health
Median CTR
0 .37%
0 .21%
Garden
Cars
Car
Music
Spots
0 .25%
0 .25%
0 .19%
Median CTR
0 .44%Woman
Heart
Sleep
Face
Health
0 .27%
0 .26%
0 .26%
0 .25%
Gardening appears to be a strong performing category.
Key Insights
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
21
Education and Family & Education and Family & Relationships
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to education and family & relationships.
Description
Believe it or not, words related to ‘education’ performed 3rd best overall compared to other topics and categories.
Key Insights
Using words oriented towards ‘house’ (homes, house, home, families) saw the highest CTR performance.
Key Insights
Education Family & Relationships
0 .26%
0 .24%
0 .22%
0 .22%
0 .24%
Students
School
University
Class
College
Median CTR Median CTR
0 .39%
0 .35%
0 .30%
0 .30%
0 .22%
Homes
House
Families
Home
Children
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
22
Dates, Places & Time and Dates, Places & Time and Business & Finance
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to dates, places & time, and business & finance.
Description
Including urgency words like ‘now’ helps improve CTR performance.
Key Insights
Money doesn’t buy you happiness but it improves CTR performance. Including the word ‘cash’ increased CTR performance.
Key Insights
Dates, Places & Time Business & Finance
0 .40%
0 .34%
0 .26%
0 .25%
0 .25%
Cash
Retirement
Cost
Stocks
Stock
Median CTR
0 .23%
0 .19%
0 .19%
Now
Summer
Day
Spring
Time
0 .22%
0 .22%
Median CTR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
23
Food and TechnologyFood and Technology
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to food and technology.
Description
The word ‘cup’ saw the highest CTR performance of all the words related to the topic and category of food.
Key Insights
Of all the words related to technology, ‘electric’ performed the best, beating the median CTR by 1 percent.
Key Insights
Food Technology
0 .24%
0 .22%
0 .16%
0 .15%
0 .15%
Electric
TV
Apps
Technology
Video
Median CTR
0 .27%
0 .26%
0 .21%
0 .20%
0 .17%
Cup
Recipe
Eat
Delicious
Restaurants
Median CTR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
24
Countries & Cities and TravelCountries & Cities And Travel
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to counties & cities, and travel.
Description
Words oriented toward ‘Canada’ performed the best(Canadian, Canada, Canada’s) against other countries.
Key Insights
Of all the words related to travel, ‘festival’ performed the best.
Key Insights
Countries & Cities Travel
Festival
Destination
Discover
Destinations
Holidays
0 .23%
0 .19%
0 .17%
0 .16%
0 .14%
Median CTR
0 .28%
0 .28%
0 .26%
Canadian
America’s
Canada
Cities
Canada’s
0 .21%
0 .21%
Median CTR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
25
Sports and Locations & Plac-Sports and Locations & Places
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing words relating to sports, and locations & places.
Description
The word ‘game’ outperformed names of specific games (football, rugby, golf) by 30 percent or more.
Key Insights
The word ‘park’ performed the best, which had a CTR more than twice as strong as the other location words.
Key Insights
Sports Locations & Places
0 .50%
0 .24%
0 .22%
Park
0 .17%
0 .17%
Urban
Place
Islands
West
Median CTR
0 .26%
0 .20%
0 .18%
0 .17%
0 .17%
Game
Football
Rugby
Fans
Golf
Median CTR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
26
Positive & Negative WordsPositive & Negative Words
Positive Word (Hot)
Positive Word (Worth)
Positive Word (Good)
Negative Word (Pain)
Negative Word (Fall)
Negative Word (Wild)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
27
Positive & Negative WordsPositive & Negative Words
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the use of the 5 positive words that had the highest CTR performance.
Description
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the use of the 5 negative words that had the highest CTR performance.
Description
Positivity can outperform negativity - Including positive words in a headline stresses positive actions, sounding helpful and encouraging rather than bureaucratic.
Key Insights
Positive Words Negative Words
Using negative words often works because it strikes curiosity. Readers are curious about negative things they shouldn’t be doing or don’t want to happen.
Key Insights
0 .37%
0 .31%
0 .25%
0 .20%
0 .20%
Pain
Wild
Fall
Miss
Hard
Median CTR
0 .28%
0 .27%
0 .26%
0 .25%
0 .24%
Hot
Worth
Good
Support
Ready
Median CTR
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
28
First WordsFirst Words
Top First Word (I)
Top First Word (Six)
Worst First Word (Experience)
Worst First Word (22)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
First WordsFirst Words
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the first word of a headline that performed the best.
Description
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the first word of a headline that performed the poorest.
Description
Top 5 First Words Worst 5 First Words
Writing headlines in a first-person point of view creates more intimacy and connection with the topic.
Numbers as the first word performed well. Numbers enhance the scalability of a headline, avoid spelling out numbers.
Key Insights
Starting a headline with a number is a great way to improve CTR, however, avoid using larger, more specific numbers such as ‘22’ as it can seem overwhelming to readers.
Key Insights
0 .29%
0 .28%
0 .26%
0 .25%
0 .23%
I
3
Six
Don’t
Four
Median CTR
0 .07%
0 .08%
0 .09%
0 .10%
0 .11%
22
Watch
Experience
Enjoy
Explore
Median CTR
29
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
A a As the previous two sections have outlined, headlines play a large role in the success of your content. Small elements such as character count and word selection must be carefully planned out if you want to entice and engage your readers. Without a good headline, it is unlikely that your content will ever be seen or read.
In this section we will dig deeper into combinations of words including phrases or listicles (list-based), which can help improve headline success.
30
SECTION 3
PHRASES
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
31
Two Word PhrasesTwo Word Phrases
Two Word Phrase (Top Tips) Two Word Phrase (Your Home)
Two Word Phrase (Your Business)Two Word Phrase (Most Important)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
Two Word PhrasesTwo Word Phrases
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the 5 best performing two word phrases. The two word phrase could have appeared anywhere within the headlines analyzed.
Description
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the 5 poorest performing two word phrases. The two word phrase could have appeared anywhere within the headlines analyzed.
Description
Top 5 Two Word Phrases Worst 5 Two Word Phrases
Median CTR
Things You
Top Tips
Your Home
A Good
What You
0 .36%
0 .35%
0 .32%
0 .31%
0 .30%
32
Median CTR
Your Business
X Most
Most Important
Cancer Research
Best Of
0 .07%
0 .07%
0 .07%
0 .08%
0 .10%
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
33
Three Word Phrases Three Word Phrases
Three Word Phrase (To Know About)
Three Word Phrase (To Make Your)
Three Word Phrase (Of The Best)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
34
Three Word PhrasesThree Word Phrases
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the best 5 performing three word phrases used in a headline. The three word phrase could have appeared anywhere within the headlines analyzed.
Description
Top 5 Three Word Phrases
Phrase
Med
ian
CTR
Of The Best
To Make Your
To Know About
You Need To
How To Make
0 .27%0 .25%
0 .20% 0 .20% 0 .19%
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
35
Starting Two Word Phrases ExamplesStarting Two Word Phrases
Starting Two Words (X Things)
Starting Two Words (What To)
Starting Two Words (The X)
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
36
Starting Two Word PhrasesStarting Two Word Phrases
The chart plots out CTR performance based on the top 5 performing starting two word phrases in a headline.
Description
‘X things’ saw the best CTR performance and is a commonly used beginning listicle phrase.
The use of numbers helps improve CTR performance, but remember to use numerals instead of spelled out numbers.
Key Insights
Top 5 Starting Two Word Phrases
Ph
rase
Median CTR
X Things
What To
The X
This Is
Are You
0 .34%
0 .24%
0 .23%
0 .19%
0 .19%
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?
Toronto 610-156 Front Street W.
Toronto, ON M5J 2L6
New York City 1216 Broadway
New York City, NY 10001
London 41 Corsham Street
London, UK N1 6DR
Sydney L1-204 Clarence Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
About PolarPolar’s technology helps premium publishers accelerate branded content
revenue growth. Conde Nast, Gannett, Oath, News Corp and The Telegraph
partner with us to grow their direct-sold branded content businesses. Our
Branded Content Platform is built exclusively for premium publishers and
offers distribution, campaign management and insights reporting capabilities.
We are entirely focused on solutions that drive more views, make operations
more efficient and prove branded content works. We partner with publishers
across 15 countries and have offices in Toronto, New York, London and Sydney.
To learn more, visit us at polar.me.
CONTACT US AT WWW .POLAR .ME
37
What Makes a Great Branded Content Headline?