Media and Publishing companies are no longer focusing on Page Views as a Key Performance Indicator. For example, the Financial Times looks over the last 90 days to see how recently a reader visited them, how many times they visited, and how much they read during that period (you can read more about it here). Such metrics empower the commercial site. But FT has a luxurious position since it publishes finance related content mainly which can be monetized well.
Many Media and Publishing companies publish all types of content, some of which drive low eCPM (e.g. Politics, Law Enforcement), other types a much higher eCPM (Business, Sports, Special Interest). These publishers face the challenge to shape the consumption towards content that they can monetize best. How can they do this?
When shaping traffic two objectives need to be balanced: how to keep users engaged by directing them to relevant content, and how to properly monetize this user traffic. (see this study)
Klangoo has developed advanced Shaping Traffic technology which has increased the pages consumed in the Business section for Independent Online (IOL) a by over 30%, without jeopardizing the loyalty of their readers. There are a few reasons for this success:
- Typical viewer/reader behavior is not linear. Within one visit a consumer, Joe, usually reads 2 politics, 2 sports and 3 entertainment stories. The technology needs to consider that: if Joe has read 2 sports articles the likelihood of him reading a 3rd one is small.
- Some consumers are just not interested in business news. Forcing them to read these stories will jeopardize pages consumed per session or, worse, have them abandon you.
- Even the biggest sports fans are not interested in all sports. A deep understanding of what an individual is interested in will help you to support his content consumption journey.
How does technology support this?
- It all starts with deeply understanding what the content is about, we call this the “aboutness” factor, which is done automatically without the need for tagging an article.
- Combining the “aboutness” with the content consumed by a consumer gives the “Content DNA” of an individual.
- Rules can be setup to shape the traffic. A rule could be “bias on content in the business or sports section”, or “drive traffic to our special interest site about Gardening”.
Taking in account the Content DNA of Joe (he likes sports, especially American Football but lately he’s been reading about Basketball) and his content consumption journey, if Joe only read one Basketball article during the visit, we can, gently, display some American Football articles that might intrigue Joe’s interest again.
If you want to know more, reach out to our team here.