Audience data Archives | Page 4 of 4

Why Identity Resolution Can Help You Future-Proof Your Businesses

Is your media company converting anonymous visitors into registered users and then monitoring their behavior? To help secure your company’s future, it’s worth transforming your website’s visitors into identifiable and trackable community members.

“Real-time data collection, analysis and targeting is the glue that keeps customers engaged with relevant information,” states a report by FIPP, a global publishing association.

Rather than guessing how to invest in your brand’s consumer experience, you can use data to piece together an accurate picture of your digital community. That way, you’ll understand how to cater to consumers as their interests change.

Read on to discover why understanding your community through identity resolution is part of the winning formula that leads to sustainable business growth.

Understanding Identity Resolution

How well can you truly know your online community if you don’t analyze each individual? That’s where identity resolution comes in.

“Identity resolution offers a 360-degree view of an individual and the ability to effectively identify a person across multiple devices by recognizing and connecting individual data points, allowing marketers and publishers to form a clear idea of who their customers are on an individual level — and more importantly, how, where and when to best reach them,” Digiday explains.

In other words, media companies can piece together consumer identities and behaviors on their properties to get a complete understanding of their communities.

The identity resolution process offers insight into what types of content and experiences are most impactful on consumers. If you can gather a detailed view of your online visitors, you can meet your community’s ever-changing needs.

The Hidden Power of Known Visitors

Between the consumers coming and going from your digital properties on different devices and those toggling between browsers, it can feel practically impossible to keep tabs on your audience.

Now consider how simple this process could be if your anonymous visitors had to register for premium features or events on your platform.

With a registration process in place, your visitors will no longer be anonymous as they travel and interact across your site’s pages.

Transforming your anonymous visitors into known users comes with a handful of benefits for media companies. One significant advantage is that you’ll have more information on your audience members, which can be used to improve their experience with your brand.

And using identity resolution to customize on-site experiences for consumers is key to boosting subscription revenue. “According to subscription solutions provider Piano’s research, the average conversion rate of registered users is 10x that of anonymous visitors,” writes Faisal Kalim, a business journalist from What’s New In Publishing.

Prioritizing User Registrations in a World Without Third-Party Cookies

Having a firm grasp of your community’s identity is essential to securing the future of both your subscription and ad revenues.

Until recently, third-party data has been a primary way for businesses to gather information on visitors. With the ongoing move to phase third-party cookies out across internet browsers, using first-party data to understand and track visitors is a clear, sustainable step forward.

Converting anonymous visitors to registered users is an effective way to gather that first-party data, keep track of your users and match their movements and information to your subscriber list. After all, the last thing anyone wants is a disconnected view of user behavior as they register, subscribe and switch between devices.

“Registration is part of the funnel to growing reader engagement and donations while improving advertising quality and targeting so the benefit will be twofold to both strands of revenue,” explains Alice Pickthall, a senior analyst at a subscription research company.

A registration process offers insight into each community member. As a result, you can provide them with personalized, consistent experiences that suit their interests and behaviors.

You can also work with your advertisers to produce high-performing, targeted ads based on your community’s data.

The better a company understands its visitors, the better it can target ads to them and engage them, improving the experience for community members, staff and advertisers.

How Viafoura Can Help

Not all community-building and engagement solutions in the media landscape will offer you access to your community’s first-party data.

At Viafoura, we know that your on-site audience data controls the fate of your business. That’s why our engagement solution gives you complete access to your user data while meeting your information security and compliance needs.

Our engagement tools also offer flexible login options, allowing anyone to register to use our engagement tools on partner websites. The Viafoura solution can connect to your subscription service as well for a unified, consistent view of your community.

Ultimately, identity resolution can help to inform your business decisions, strengthening your community and revenue streams. To start learning about your visitors’ identities and using that knowledge to build a thriving community, get in touch with Viafoura.

Churn Reduction 101: What the Media Experts Have to Say

Thanks to the unpredictable algorithms on big tech platforms and decline of third-party cookies, the most effective path to earning revenue is changing. Media companies must now compensate for these failing revenue streams by investing in their own properties.

As a result, subscription or membership-based business models are becoming commonplace among media companies. But with most consumers only willing to pay for up to four media services at a time, the competitive landscape is resulting in high amounts of subscriber churn.

“It is always much easier to retain somebody than to bring in someone new, because they already value and trust you,” states Condé Nast’s VP of audience development and analytics.

So to keep your audience members loyal and lucrative, you must focus on activating and engaging a tight-knit community right on your website or app.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what your fellow industry experts have to say on how to go about reducing customer churn.

The Athletic: Building an Engaged Community

Every loyal, paying community starts with an engaging conversion strategy. And The Athletic’s CEO, Alex Mather, thinks so too.

“We see an incredible connection between community engagement and subscriber retention,” says Mather. “The question that drives us is how can we connect users in an authentic way, how can we connect users to our staff in an authentic way.”

Successful conversion strategies tend to connect engagement and registration systems together. That way, you can detect drops in engagement, and send special content offers to those likely to churn.

The Wall Street Journal: Early Habit Formation

“The biggest driver of churn reduction amongst new [subscription] members is the creation of early habit formation,” writes Ian Tucker, the associate director of optimization at The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal’s subscriber onboarding process ensures that the first 100 days after becoming a subscriber — the period a user is most likely to form habits — are packed with opportunities for engagement.

The more interactions you can encourage from your subscribers, the more likely they are to return to your property in the future. Translation: encourage your readers to habitually use your platform, and watch as their loyalty grows.

“It’s not just about building our membership models, and looking at churn rates, and acquisitions rates,” states Jonathan Wright, who works as the global managing director for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. “It’s really about the engagement of those customers once we have them on the platform, once they’re experiencing the content.”

The New York Times: Understanding Subscribers

User data truly stands at the heart of engaging and retaining consumers at The New York Times. According to the company’s editorial director of newsletters, data and user research is essential in helping companies learn what kinds of content subscribers crave, and how they most wish to consume it.

In other words, a business can best understand its audience by seriously digging into its first-party data, and then using that knowledge to refine the subscriber experience.

It’s also important to monitor your audience data and engagement closely to understand why and when subscribers are churning.

“The bottom line is that people who aren’t using the product are likely to churn… Email them, reach out to remind them what you’re doing and what’s of value to them,” explains The Times’ CEO.

There are a multitude of ways you can help to prevent your audience members from unsubscribing. Learn how to prevent churn and re-engage unsubscribers here.

OTT Platforms: Personalization

“We know that today’s connected consumers expect a deeply personalized experience,” states Jason Wong, Hulu’s director of product management.

Through the power of your audience’s data, you can enrich their experience with relevant information and content.

“If you can understand what people care about during the process, and prove to them you can be trusted with the information you’re asking for, that goes a long way. Then they can just focus on the experience they are trying to buy,” says the head of the acquisition and retention team at DAZN.

Consumers are willing to pay for valuable media experiences. So by engaging your subscribers through custom and “premium” experiences, you’ll be setting your company up for long-term success.

Here’s How to Win Over Younger Audiences Before You Lose Their Attention For Good

At the moment, 64% of the earth’s population is made up of millennials (those born between 1981-1996) and Generation Z (those born after 1996). That means no matter how loyal your audience is to your media company, if you aren’t attracting younger consumers, you’re losing out on a huge portion of potential subscribers. Not to mention your existing audience is continuing to age out of your target demographic.

It isn’t hard to see why younger generations are becoming increasingly important to the future of your brand. But here’s the catch: millennials and Gen Zers are notorious for their short attention spans, and can’t easily be won over by ads and content.

So what’s a media company to do in order to attract and retain them?

We’ve gathered the top, tried-and-true ways to grab and hold the attention of Gen Y and Z. Take your business to the next level by applying these best practices to your company’s content strategy.

A Flawless Mobile-First Experience

If you know anything about millennials and Gen Z, you probably know that they’re glued to their smartphones.

In fact, 40% of Gen Zers prefer streaming TV over their smartphones, and nearly 20% of millennials solely rely on their mobile devices for internet access. So when it comes to media, the user’s mobile experience is everything to younger audiences.

These individuals expect organizations to offer quick and seamless mobile experiences. Which means your website, app or video-streaming platform must be completely responsive to different device sizes and load content instantly.

Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a highly profitable audience that might have been loyal to your brand.

Social Immersion Outside of Social Media

From the explosion of Facebook in the early 2000’s to the popularity of Snapchat and TikTok, it’s clear that generations Y and Z both value online social interaction.

But rather than allowing these interactions to happen on social media, bring this love for socialization right to your platform. That way, you can directly monetize their time spent interacting with one another. You can also generate consumer loyalty as they build meaningful connections to your platform.

Consider implementing moderated conversation, live chat or interactive blogging tools to give your visitors a way to be social on your platform.

Personalize the Experience

McKinsey and Company, an international consulting agency, conducted a survey and found that “Generation Z is not only eager for more personalized products but also willing to pay a premium for products that highlight their individuality.”

Since younger audiences have grown up in the midst of the digital age, they’re completely accustomed to being bombarded with content from hundreds of media companies. Great content is everywhere these days. So if you want your content to stand out from the competition, your user’s experience must be both unique and personal.

“Young people are not a monolithic marketing segment,” states an article on Forbes. They expect media organizations to treat them as individual humans, not just a number.

Want the solution? Simply look to your first-party data to determine how you can customize the experience according to the interests of your visitors.

Amplify Your Brand’s Authenticity

Millennials and Gen Zers both value a certain degree of transparency and sincerity in their relationships not just with humans, but also with the companies they choose to support.

“Gen Z craves a personal, authentic connection,” the editor of a report on Generation Z tells CNBC. “The key is to know your brand and evolve accordingly. Quick about-faces and trend-chasing will be seen for what they are.”

So connect with your younger audiences over topics and issues that matter not just to them, but also to your organization.

Fun Fact: Almost 90% of Generation Z prefers supporting companies that help out with social or environmental issues.

Rely on Visual Content

“With new voices and new platforms entering the media landscape by the minute, the competition for young people’s attention has never been greater,” VICE’s Senior VP of Global Insights says.

Thankfully, visual content like GIFs, memes and most importantly, video, is richer than just text-based articles, and can reach consumers in a matter of seconds.

We’ve all seen how visual-only social media platforms have become extremely popular with younger generations, after all. Brands that want to effectively create loyal and younger audience members must learn to replicate engaging visual experiences on their own platforms.

In general, to capture the attention of younger audiences, you need more than just great content and products — you need to offer exclusive, unique experiences.

Growing Media Trends That Will Hook Consumers in 2020

2020 has finally arrived, prompting media professionals everywhere to examine and test new industry trends. So how can one possibly predict which ones will help businesses grow and which ones will not? With so many budding media trends to sift through, be sure to keep this in mind: those that reel in, engage and retain consumers are the ones that will ultimately pay off in the long run.

“The race for consumers’ attention is becoming ever more competitive,” writes an industry expert in an International News Media Alliance article. “It’s increasingly important to be relevant to create a meaningful connection with an audience.”

In other words, audience engagement will be business-critical in 2020. In order to attract and engage consumers to your brand, understand and implement the fast-rising media trends below.

Audience-First Journalism

Over the past few years, consumer trust in media has taken a serious nosedive thanks to all the misinformation and fake news spreading around social media. But with revenue models moving towards subscription and membership-driven programs, trust between brands and audiences must be re-established.

As a result, journalists are beginning to put their audiences at the forefront of the content they produce, and even involve them in the content-production process. One media trend in particular known as engaged journalism — the process of building content with audience members — is picking up steam since it gives brands the opportunity to truly listen to and engage their audience members.

Solutions journalism has also been inching its way into 2020, which is where journalists go beyond covering a story by suggesting how to resolve the issues at hand. And with 57% of Americans expressing that reading news affects them in a negative way, solutions journalism could prevent audiences from becoming overwhelmed by your content.

Personalizing the User’s Experience

According to NiemanLab, first-party user data will become increasingly significant to media organizations in 2020. Brands will need to rely on the data they can scrape from their own platforms in order to identify audience appetites and trends.

Linsday Leaf, VP of experiential marketing for POPSUGAR, explains why her brand sees so much audience engagement: “We really listen to our audience — what they react to, what makes them tick and then we serve the trends, topics and experiences we know they crave.”

User data is also becoming more important now than ever before to video-streaming platforms. This data allows OTT platforms to serve up relevant content to their audiences, enhancing the user experience.

First-party data insights open up a world of opportunity to media organizations, including the ability to target meaningful content to known users, push highly engaged users to your paywall or send special offers to inactive subscribers about to churn.

Data Transparency

Thanks to the GDPR and CCPA privacy laws, as well as the countless data breaches that have taken place online, your audience members want to know how their data will be used and handled.

Being open with your audience about how their data is being used will help them feel more comfortable to hand over their personal info. Reassure them even more by telling them exactly what kind of premium experience they’ll get in exchange for their data.

Investing in Audio Content

In 2019 alone, over half of Americans listened to a podcast, showing massive growth from 2018. Spotify also noted that its listeners have consumed almost 40% more podcasting hours compared to its last quarter. Clearly, audio content is catching on for media organizations.

Not only is audio equipment an extremely inexpensive investment, but FIASCO podcast host Leon Neyfakh also notes “that podcasting is a distinctly intimate medium, [where] people form a special connection to podcast hosts because they have us in their ears while they’re walking around and living their lives.”

That special connection between podcast host and listener is a solid way to build loyalty towards your brand.

Interactive Video

2020 will be the year that video takes on a whole new meaning of the word ‘engaging.’ More specifically, media organizations have started incorporating interactive elements into their videos to fascinate viewers.

Take Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch film, for instance. The video-streaming platform tested this interactive movie in 2018, where viewers could influence the plot by making decisions for the film’s protagonist. After the film produced a successful response from its audience, Netflix announced that it’ll be “doubling down” on interactive video in the future.

Other media organizations are also testing out video content and ads that consumers are able to shop through. In these cases, eCommerce crosses over with media content to deepen audience engagement through a shoppable, content-viewing experience.

Staff as Influencers

From Buzzfeed, and Bon Apétite to a variety of podcast hosts, media staff from all walks of life will be upping their efforts to engage audience members directly in 2020. This includes staff members starring in regular videos, attending meet-and-greet events, running live chats and responding to user comments.

By creating a direct connection between audience and staff, brands are able to transform users into dedicated fans. Your audience is the lifeblood of your organization — this means that the most useful media trends in 2020 will consistently engage and monetize consumers.

Audience Engagement Data is About to Amp up Sports Media

Just last week, Adam Hodgkins, the senior business development manager at Genius Sports Media, published an insightful article that dug into why audience engagement data on-site is the key to growing revenue in sports. And we couldn’t agree more.

“There’s an awareness in the OTT space that sports companies have lost control of their audiences to social media,” says Michael Shewchenko, Head of Business Development for Sports and Media at Viafoura. “But they now have an opportunity to engage their audiences on their properties in a positive and highly valuable way, and use their own data to put a name and a face to their users.”

Audience engagement data is the money-making factor that many sports companies are missing out on. Any sports company that wants to significantly boost revenue would, therefore, benefit greatly from connecting with their audiences, learning who their community members are, and then using that information to create and send highly relevant content and ads.

Unlocking a Premium Experience for Sports Fans

To connect with audiences on a more direct level, sports companies need to turn their digital properties into engaging communities — through super-exclusive spaces that capture valuable insights on users. This can be accomplished through ‘premium experiences’ that can be offered to encourage users to register or subscribe.

“Engagement tools can open up the premium experience,” says Shewchenko. “Tools that encourage on-site interaction increase the likelihood of passive sports consumers becoming active and highly engaged users. It’s all about building the two-way communication between users and brands.”

A premium experience can include anything from participating in live chats, real-time commenting and blogging to following favorite teams, players, authors, topics or getting regular updates.

In his article, Hodgkins explains that “unique behind the scenes footage, exclusive interviews and easy access to detailed statistics have handed sports leagues and teams a golden opportunity to turn their websites and social channels into valuable destinations for information-hungry fans.”

Techcrunch even conducted a recent survey, which found that 78% of industry experts believe that fan engagement tech will have the largest impact on live streaming and esports in the next year.

Sports fans are already excited about players and upcoming events — they’re practically itching to interact with one another and around related content. The more opportunities you give them to engage on your platform, the more data you’ll be able to gather on who they are and what kinds of content and experiences they like.

Not only can sports companies sell this consumer data to advertisers, but “by knowing that their audience are, say, mostly men aged between 18 and 25 who read about basketball on a daily basis, advertisers have a huge strategic advantage when choosing where to spend their budget,” says Hodgkins.

Targeting Content to Known Users

As sports companies learn who their audience members are and how they react to different types of content, they can create content and experiences that delight their communities. For instance, knowing which player is your community’s favorite can help you generate extremely high-performing, related content that your audience will devour and generate conversations around. Plus, the more engaging and relevant your platform is, the more likely your community is to grow.

By serving up a premium experience to fans, sports media is able to capture meaningful data, which can significantly improve conversion strategies, grow revenue and increase consumer loyalty.

Stop relying on third-party news aggregators and social media platforms to run your ads off of, and instead, become the primary destination for consumers.

Get to know your fans on your own properties. Give them the content and experiences they love. Then use their data to inform business strategies and grow revenue. It really is as simple as that.

Trust in Facebook is at an all-time low: Here’s how media companies can use that to their advantage

Facebook is addictive — for both consumers and advertisers. With over 1.5 billion users accessing Facebook on a daily basis, the social media giant has become a major source of advertising for brands worldwide. However, little by little, the community standards of Facebook have been dropping — and people are noticing.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal, where Facebook leaked data from millions of people to a company that used it to promote political ads, was only the beginning of the platform’s trust fall. Netflix’s documentary, The Great Hack, offers an in-depth view into the scandal.

The social media giant’s sudden and strict algorithm changes have also affected businesses in a negative way. These changes drastically reduced the reach of Facebook posts from publishers, which dropped to as little as two percent of followers.

Even as Facebook races to protect its users, their moderation solution still leaves a lot to be desired. And let’s not forget that one of Facebook’s co-founders penned an article about everything wrong with the company

Tips to capitalize on Facebook’s trust deficit

To help your brand use this mistrust between Facebook and its users as an opportunity to gain loyal community members, we put together a few of our top tips.

Invest in your own platform

With trust in Facebook at such a visible low, there’s never been a better time to start building your brand’s reputation as a trusted media source… on your own domains.

Sure, Facebook can be used to promote content and events — but only to an extent. You don’t want to be stuck relying entirely on a platform that decides how to promote your content without your input. Thankfully, you have other options. Better options.

Instead of struggling to build your brand on Facebook, invest in tools and strategies that bring engagement back to your domains. You don’t need to stop using Facebook completely. But you also don’t need to give a portion of your revenue away to a platform that doesn’t give you enough exposure for your content. After all, Facebook prioritizes posts from family and friends over posts from advertisers.

You will find more infographics at Statista

If you can invest in building a safe and engaging environment on your own domains, individuals will no longer associate your content or brand with the abundance of misinformation on Facebook.

Give the people what they want

Have you ever wondered what it is about Facebook that seems so attractive to users?

People are social creatures. Consumers continue to use Facebook despite our trust issues with the platform simply because we crave socialization and engagement. In fact, an analysis of the media industry has found that engagement is key when it comes to building loyal brand followers.

A report by Salesforce also found that “84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.”

Facebook, along with other social media platforms, offers many opportunities for users to engage with one another as well as with publishers and their content. However, attaching this immersive social experience to a brand is no longer exclusive to social media platforms.

Consider integrating tools directly on your platform that allow your users to discuss your content, chat with one another, follow their favourite authors and receive content-related notifications based on their preferences.

By generating engagement on your domains, your visitors will want to stick around and subscribe.

Nurture safe conversations, not toxic comments

Many media professionals find commenting counterproductive to a brand’s development — especially with the rise of trolls, harassment, bullying, misinformation and spam in the digital world. At the end of the day, it’s probably more effective to avoid commenting altogether, right?

Wrong.

To foster a good relationship with your digital community away from social media, you need to craft a solid set of community guidelines and enforce them. According to a new study by the Center for Media Engagement, individuals are more likely to have a negative impression of a domain when 75% of its comments are uncivil.

While it is important to engage your visitors in a social experience, they will only enjoy the experience in a toxic-free environment. This means that on top of providing a social layer for your community, it is also essential that comments are thoroughly moderated and that user data is completely secure.

Enforcing a safe environment will help your community members feel comfortable engaging in, and returning to, your domains.

Produce targeted, reliable content

In the digital age, knowledge is always power. Capturing data on your own domain is, therefore, crucial to your success. More specifically, you can leverage data insights from your community to inform your content strategy. By understanding your community members’ interests as you learn about and track their behavior, you can predict what types of content will perform best.

If you are able to create valuable content that maintains a consistent tone and is highly relevant to your readers, they will start looking to your brand as a reputable source for trusted media.

While Facebook can target content based on people’s interests, your posts are hidden behind the noise of fake news and algorithms in a potentially unpleasant environment. Even as Facebook moves to license news content from publishers, we must be cognizant of the fact that Facebook will still own part of your community.

Other publishers are also beginning to realize that success in the media is no longer just about directing visitors to your domains — it’s also about keeping them. For too long, publishers and consumers have flocked to Facebook in search of content and community. Unfortunately, both have become problematic on the platform. So, the time is right to create a protected social space around quality content and reclaim your community.

The Age of the Cookie is Crumbling Giving Publishers a Huge Opportunity

Last Updated: February 13, 2020

There once was a time when the cookie was all-powerful, drastically changing the advertising and media industries. But the cookie’s time is passing, and publishers are in search of other tools to monetize their readers.

Even Chrome is now officially joining in on the cookie crackdown.

Starting February 17th of 2020, Chrome will require web developers to set tighter restrictions on cookies. More specifically, cookies must be defaulted to first-party access — the kind that collects a small amount of user information and stores it directly on the website that the user visits. Companies that use third-party cookies — the ones that follow you around, reporting to an often-anonymous home base that re-targets you with ads — will need to tweak their website code to restrict them to secure websites.

“Only cookies set as SameSite=None; Secure will be available in third-party contexts, provided they are being accessed from secure connections,” states Google on the Chromium Blog.

If developers fail to add the necessary code, or don’t have a secure website, their cookies will be deleted without hesitation by Google. In some cases, websites may even break if the proper cookie code isn’t added in.

Although this update won’t completely eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome yet, the company is limiting their use to secure websites and eventually plans to phase them out altogether by 2022.

While this change could bring about yet another period of dread and uncertainty for media companies, we think it actually marks an opportunity for publishers to reclaim authority as the shepherds of engaged audiences. All it takes is quality journalistic content and a connection with readers. Just like the good ol’ days.

How it Crumbled

Consider the events that led to the crumbling of the almighty cookie: Its fall from popularity started when Safari — often the most-used browser on North American mobile devices — began limiting third-party cookies. Firefox and Google followed suit, blocking more and more tracking with every product update.

End users benefit from this shift because being tracked across the internet feels creepy, so any step away from that is a good one. But while many online publishers currently rely on ads served using tracking data, the Great Cookie Shift will be a boon for them too.

Cookies have devalued the context of where a given ad appeared. Because cookies have been able to find someone anywhere it doesn’t always make sense for an advertiser to pay a premium to serve it on a site producing quality journalism. That has, in turn, disincentivized publishers from producing high-quality content in exchange for sheer volume.

But if third-party cookies are de-powered as a result of browser changes and ads can no longer easily heat-seek their way to a reader in any ol’ corner of the internet, advertisers will have to shift their approach to find the quality audience they seek.

Why Quality Matters More Than Ever

The selling of quality context is going to matter more and more and advertisers, agencies, trading desks and everyone in between will be thinking more about that. Instead of chasing the New York Times’ audience to cheaper third-party sites with retargeting, it will mean advertisers must simply advertise on the actual New York Times.

However, capitalizing on this opportunity will rely on engagement with audiences.

As Martin Pietrzak, Viafoura’s VP of Marketing put it, “If you can no longer target anonymous, single-visit users, quality connections with audience members will need to be the focus. Converting anonymous users to registered users will be key, and the faster a publisher can do that, the better off they’ll be.”

”The big win is that publishers can profile their registered users on the server side, gathering rich behavioural data in a way that’s immune to cookie restrictions.
Dan SeamanDirector of Product

The big win, in this case, is that publishers can profile their registered users on the server side, gathering rich behavioural data (pages visited, dwell time, ads clicked etc.) in a way that’s immune to cookie restrictions. That behavioural information — matched with declarative demographic info — is valuable first-party data that publishers can offer to brands who advertise directly on site, or to exchanges who want inventory.

First-party data has always been incredibly valuable, and publishers could become the gold standard for that once again, Pietrzak added.

Before the digital revolution, news organizations marshalled large audiences for advertisers, offering little data beyond the size of readership and overall demographics to help with content adjacency. At a time when cookies are giving way to privacy concerns, those same organizations are positioned to lead the pack again, this time rich with user behaviour information given willingly by an engaged audience.

Read more about how media companies can drive retention, loyalty and trust in our guide.

Please note that this article was last updated on February 10, 2020.

How The Irish Times Uses Audience Data to Build Engaged Communities with Quality Content

Sometimes the solution to a complicated problem means thinking outside the box.

Or outside the country.

Just ask Patrick Logue, the digital editor of the Irish Times. Logue joined the 160-year-old paper in 1996 when its website was just two years old, a shadow of the print edition.

In the more than two decades since his arrival, the editor has seen the paper move away from the traditional newsstand sales-dependent model and transform into a profitable multi-platform media organization that in recent years has actually seen its audience grow.

“It’s been a mammoth task,” says Logue of the transitions he’s witnessed. “The traditional model is broken, so we’re creating a new one focused on finding new audiences and revenue.”

As other Irish papers have watched their circulation numbers shrink, Logue and his team are drawing in new readers in droves – and not from where or how you might think.

Paywall Innovator

Back 2015, print sales at the Times were plummeting and online advertising was hardly making up for it. The Times’ circulation had dropped 45 percent in the previous five years, and things were looking dire. It felt like a race to the bottom, as other publications pumped out click-bait stories in pursuit of page views.

The Times made a bold decision. Instead of focusing on page views in the hopes of generating advertising revenue, they would create premium content that users would be willing to pay for. Up until then, all the major Irish dailies had been providing their online content for free.

That year, the Times became the first Irish daily to introduce a digital “leaky” paywall meaning readers could view 10 articles for free each week, but to read more, they had to subscribe for either 12 or 16 euros ($13.40 or $17.86) a month. “We decided that we were not going to chase traffic in an aggressive manner,” says Logue.

The other benefit of this approach? Developing content paying readers want.

Logue says the paper then began using the new data generated by online readership to discover what was important to readers — be it abortion laws, Irish History, or these days, Brexit.

“We become the experts on these big issues,” he says. “We break things down in simple ways using explainers, infographics, and evergreen digital content that informs the reader.”

This dedicated focus on quality has led to several Times stories dominating global news cycles. A story reporting the Times’ exit poll of the 2018 abortion referendum was viewed more than a million times, with the BBC breaking into regular programming to report the poll’s results. An editorial about Donald Trump’s ties to fascism by revered columnist Fintan O’Toole broke the paper’s record with 1.3 million page views.

”“The traditional model is broken, so we’re creating a new one focused on finding new audiences and revenue.”
Patrick LogueDigital Editor, The Irish Times

Data-driven Community Building

Audience data has continued to reveal unexpected opportunities to develop active, loyal communities with existing readers. For example, one of Logue’s responsibilities is to search for new, untapped readers, and he was surprised to find them beyond Ireland’s borders.

“We recognized that there is a large Irish diaspora around the world,” he says of the one in six people born in Ireland who now lives overseas. “They’re hungry for a sense of community and for information from home.”

To satiate this audience, Logue created the paper’s Abroad Network. Readers anywhere in the world can sign up and will receive a weekly email containing a collection of Times stories as well as e-ballots to participate in polls about important political events.

”“We recognized there is a large Irish diaspora...they're hungry for a sense of community and for information from home.”

Patrick LogueDigital Editor, The Irish Times

Abroad Network readers are also encouraged to contribute as photographers, writers or interviewees to the online project Generation Emigration, a digital section featuring the images and personal narratives of Irish readers living abroad, including a personal report from New Zealand after the Christchurch mass shooting in New Zealand, reports from the front lines of climate change in Australia, and numerous essays on Brexit from Irish citizens living in the United Kingdom.

“We found these readers were looking for a sense of community and were also willing to contributing content,” he says. “Generation Emigration brought in a new audience, and in a very real sense created that community.”

Logue explains that the overall goal is to drive traffic, engagement and ultimately subscriptions while at the same time bringing in ad revenue. It has proved effective — some 35 percent of the Times’ page views now come from outside Ireland, and the Abroad Network has 35,000 members.

This two-fold approach of quality content and community building within its readership has been an important part of the strategy that has kept the Times in the black in recent years.

An audit of the paper in February of 2019 showed digital edition daily circulation of 21,275 — a 26 percent increase over the previous year. The paper also grew its total daily circulation by two percent to 79,406, with sales of digital subscriptions rising more quickly than the decline of print. As such, digital revenue has grown by 8.7 percent in 2018 even as print sales dropped by 8 percent. The paper posted a €2 million euro (US$2,200,000) profit last year — which is no small feat in today’s newspaper market.

Read more about how media companies can drive retention, loyalty and trust in our guide.