Buzzfeed Among Highest Ranking Publishers For Social Media Referrals

Posted on September 26, 2016 by

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When broken down by social platform, different publishers emerge as top recipients of referral traffic, underscoring the importance of publishers promoting content tailored for each platform. For example, Forbes’ and Mashable’s business content are tailor-made for LinkedIn, while The Kitchn’s and Better Homes and Garden’s content are appropriate for Pinterest.

According to the report, BuzzFeed articles fare best on Face- book and Pinterest, while Mashable’s articles are most popular on Twitter and LinkedIn. MSN drives the most article shares on Google+, followed by the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Forbes and NBC. Meanwhile, popular outlets driving traffic across various social media platforms include the Huffington Post, CNN, The New York Times, the Daily Mail, the BBC, Women’s Health, The Kitchn, Greatist, Better Homes and Gardens and Inc.

Buzzsumo and Fractl’s 2014 research on 2.6 billion shares of 1 million articles, knowledge-based verbs, positive adjectives and headlines with action words drive referrals.
For example:

  • Use knowledge based verbs such as understand, know, think, prove and believe
  • Use positive adjectives such as hilarious, happiest, cutest, greatest and adorable
  • Use headlines with action words such as focused, shaped, investigated, targeted, guided, investigated and visualised
  • Add photos and videos to posts. Users are more likely to click on content posted with a photo092616b

The study also revealed that each social media plat- form has resounding content themes that drive post popularity:

  • Facebook has become a favourite social media net- work for news sites because its content genres are many: entertainment, news and commercial
  • Twitter: Pop culture
  • Google+: World and industry news
  • Pinterest: Food, home, health, and beauty
  • LinkedIn: Professional development and business 
The study also explored the distribution of articles shared and to what degree across social media, by publisher, including The New York Times, Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Vice, Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. While half or more of the articles from the New York Times, Daily Mail and Mirror appear to go unnoticed, the 12 percent of BuzzFeed do so. “Unnoticed” is defined as an article receiving fewer than 100 shares. 
Meanwhile, some publishers are more successful at driving social media referrals for articles to become popular or even viral. According to the study, 24 percent of Buzzfeed articles have become popular, that is, have been shared 2,000 to 10,000 times, compared to 11 percent each for the Huffington Post and the Daily Mirror. Fewer than 10 percent of The New York Times, Daily Mirror, Telegraph, Guardian and Vice articles have become popular or viral during the survey period.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to www.wnmn.org.

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Brazil Shares Most News Content in Entire World

Posted on September 23, 2016 by

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Only five years ago, bookmarking and direct-to-homepage visits were by far the means by which readers accessed news- paper and magazine websites. Now social media and search are the predominant access points for these sites.

However, users in each country drive regional trends. In Europe in particular, access to traditional media still rules, fol- lowed by social media access for news and, to a lesser degree, pure play offerings like Google News and MSN News. Mean- while, social media-accessed news dominates in Japan and to a lesser degree, Brazil and Italy, according to the 2014 edition of Reuters Institute’s annual Digital Study.

It follows that Brazil and Italy are among the most prolific content sharers via email or social networks, with 54 percent of Brazilians and 44 percent of Italians sharing content via social networks or email every week. Other countries where users are also prolific sharers are Spain, 40 percent; the 092316aUnited States, 35 percent; Finland, 24 percent; Denmark, 23 percent; and France, 21 percent.

Social media users share actions like links, posts and comments with friends, colleagues and family on the social platforms that resonate with them. Facebook commanded an 82 percent share of all articles shared, according to Buzzsumo and Fractl’s 2014 report, “Which Publishers are Winning in Social Engagement.” The report studied 2.6 billion shares of 1 million articles from 90 global publishers on five social plat- forms in the first half of 2014. Other social networks trailed behind significantly, with Twitter driving 8.6 percent of shares; Google+, 4.3 percent; Pinterest, 3 percent; and LinkedIn, 2.2 percent.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

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Buzzfeed Reports 80 Percent of its Web Traffic is Driven by Social Media

Posted on September 19, 2016 by

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The days of readers going directly to a news outlet’s home page are over. Most magazine and newspaper publishers are finding that less than 10 percent of their traffic comes directly to their home pages. Meanwhile, the double-digit and triple-digit growth of social media referrals may have reached a tipping point with search engine referrals as a marketing method to drive traffic to magazine and newspaper media content in 2014, according to Shareaholic’s ongoing research.

For these reasons, publishers must beef up their social media optimisation (SMO) operations, whilst continuing their search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.

Social media is locked in a seesaw battle for dominance with search. 19 drives an average of one-third (31.7 per- cent) of publishing sites’ traffic, according to a Dec. 2014 study by Shareaholic, compared to 22.7 percent in Dec. 2013. Social referrals to publisher websites edged ahead of search referrals in June 2014 (30.9 percent vs. 29.4 percent) and Sept. 2014 (29.4 percent vs. 29.1 percent), with referrals drawn from 360,000 websites and 420 million unique website visits.092316b

Anecdotally, publishers are reporting that the percentage of referral traffic from social networks is much higher: BuzzFeed reports 80 percent of its
 Web traffic is driven by social media, while Quartz reports 70 percent is “side door” (non-home page) traffic from social. Facebook alone accounts for more than half of Hearst magazines’ referral traffic.

Meanwhile De Persgroep, a newspaper and magazine publisher in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, reports that 30 percent of its traffic came from social media referrals in 2014, while 22 percent came from search, 23 percent directly to apps and 14 percent directly to the site. Social media referrals are up 179 percent from 2013, leapfrogging search-driven referrals.

Parse.ly, an analytics technology company whose publisher clients include
 Condé Nast magazines, Reuters, Dallas
Morning News, Fox News, Advance
Digital, The Telegraph, Slate, the Atla
tic and Mashable, analyses 10 billion
page views and 400 page views total
each month to determine its clients’
referral traffic. Parse.ly reports that
Facebook gained 10-percentage points 
in referral traffic in 2014 to reach 22
 percent, while Google sites have remained stable at 35 percent referral traffic to these sites.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

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Premium Publisher Sites Advertising Costs Three Times That of Premium Display Ads

Posted on September 16, 2016 by

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Video advertising units are far more valuable to publishers than premium display ads, which fetched an average of $10.87 CPM in Jan. 2014, according to eMarketer. For premium publishers’ sites, such as established newspaper and magazine companies, the average premium video advertising cost was three times that of premium display ads, or $31.20 CPM, graph example. Advertising agency buyers use analytics and standardized metrics to determine the size of audiences they are buying. In order to accurately relay the true audience for
a magazine’s print, online, tablet, mobile and video audiences, analytics companies and media associations have joined forces to create cross-media analytics.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

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Online Video Ad Spending in US Will Double in 2018

Posted on September 12, 2016 by

091216Online video ad spending in the United States will almost double from US$3.52 billion in 2013 to $6.83 billion in 2018, while mobile video ad spend will surge from $660 million in 2013 to $5.44 billion in 2018, eMarketer forecasts in its “Video Content Roundup.” The double-digit growth of digital video adspend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future in the United States – the most prolific video advertising market in the world – and around the world.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

 

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Video and Mobile are Fastest Growing Units Alongside Video Advertising

Posted on September 9, 2016 by

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Video is the fastest growing digital advertising unit, expected to grow at about 24 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2018, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report “Global entertainment and media outlook 2014 to 2018.” Mobile advertising growth comes in second place, growing at a 23 percent CAGR, followed distantly by search, display and classifieds.

Video advertising continues to grow, taking share from other digital media over time. 090916bAccording to PwC, video and particularly mobile advertising are poised to encroach on the Internet’s most lucrative advertising genres: search, display and classifieds. From 2009 to 2018, video advertising share around the world is projected to more than double, and mobile advertising is poised to almost treble at the expense of the incumbents.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

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Importance of Video Content and Popularity Differ by Category

Posted on September 5, 2016 by

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Is there a difference between news of interest to the video viewer and news videos they actually watch? It has long been said that readers and viewers know they should read and view news of substance and import like world news, but frequently are drawn in by the allure of salacious and lightweight content such as celebrity gossip and intriguing crime stories.

The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2014 explored how video viewers in Germany, Spain, Finland, the United States and the United Kingdom balance the news of interest to the video consumer with the actual video news frequently accessed on each subject.

For example, while economic news, international news and local news are areas of interest to video viewers, videos on these more serious subjects are less likely to be watched. Meanwhile, lighter and more entertaining video topics like the arts, entertainment, fun and “weird” news and sporting news are far more likely to be accessed compared to the interest level of the viewer. In particular, 57 percent of the respondents said they were interested in arts and culture videos, but 67 percent actually watched them. Meanwhile, 40 percent said they were interested in fun and weird videos, while 50 percent actually accessed them. Twenty-seven percent of video viewers said they were interested in business and financial videos and 42 percent actually watch them.

For more information, or to download the executive summary of the 2015 Global Digital Media Trendbook, go to http://www.wnmn.org.

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