How publishers are using Facebook to find loyal readers

Transcription

1 How publishers are using Facebook to find loyal readers

2 > intro As publishers adjust their focus from volume to quality, they are increasingly relying on the targeting capabilities of paid channels to reach more qualified audiences those with readers that are likely to purchase a subscription or sign up to a mailing list. As a result, it is more imperative than ever that publishers distribute their stories to the right people those who are not merely window shopping but are actually inclined to become loyal readers. But how can media companies successfully identify and reach prospective loyal readers? In this whitepaper we ll look at two examples, from two very different types of publishers: New York Magazine and PureWow. Several major traditional print publishers experienced greater than 20% visitor gains in 2015, led by the Washington Post with 78% yearover-year audience growth and Dow Jones & Company (home of The Wall Street Journal) with 58% growth. Digital audiences have undergone a sustained period of growth from the emergence of the mobile internet, but signs that this growth trend is beginning to taper off point to a growing demand for metrics that go beyond demonstrating scale. Engagement metrics, such as time spent and meaningful visits, are likely to play an increasing role in articulating the value of a digital media property s audience. U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus comscore, 2016

3 > case #1 How New York Magazine owns its audience Since its founding in 1968, New York Magazine has been the publication of record reporting on culture, politics, and style from the New York City point of view. Over the past decade, the company has undergone an impressive online expansion, turning its vertical-specific properties into premiere digital destinations. Among them are popular sites like Vulture, a leader in entertainment and pop culture news, Grub Street, the definitive guide to New York dining and national food trends, and The Cut, an outlet helping women stay up-to-date on the latest fashion and news that matter most to them. Each of these brands boasts an impressive online following, largely due to the efforts of New York Magazine s skilled audience development team. Not only is the team responsible for driving traffic to its various sites, it s also charged with converting users into loyal site visitors, subscribers, and social media followers. As a result of these efforts, New York Magazine s website pulled in 28 million monthly unique visitors in November, a new record for the company and up 80% over 2015.* To find audiences for its content, New York Magazine, like nearly all publishers, supplements organic traffic with paid acquisition channels. Social media audiences can be challenging, however, as users often click on Facebook posts but may not come back to the site for repeat visits at a high rate. The New York Magazine team consistently looks to find solutions that will drive qualified users who will re-engage with their content and eventually become avid, loyal site readers. For help finding the right readers for their content, New York Magazine partnered with Keywee.

4 > case #1 With Keywee s help, New York Magazine has been able to reach their ideal readers at a costeffective price. Keywee s software analyzed New York Magazine s site articles using natural-language processing. Keywee essentially read each article, picking out unique keywords and phrases that best captured what the content was about. Next, based on the results from the text analysis, Keywee s algorithms identified the audiences most likely to engage with the content from the 18 million audiences available on Facebook. To New York Magazine s advantage, these algorithms also incorporated insights from all prior Keywee campaigns, helping ensure the best audiences possible at a low cost-per-click. Finally, Keywee s software automatically created hundreds of sponsored Facebook posts promoting New York Magazine s articles to the target audiences. Each post was promoted with a bid optimized for the selected audience, resulting in higher than average click-throughrates and cost-per-clicks well below New York Magazine s target price. In fact, with Keywee s help New York Magazine was able to achieve CPC rates that were 30% lower than their goal. As an added perk, Facebook posts promoted through Keywee enjoyed a 10% average lift in organic traffic thanks to the high rate of promoted post engagement. Working with Keywee is -30% +10% really exciting because it REDUCTION LIFT IN allows us to expand our IN CPC reach to target more of the right audiences. Brooklyn Presta Audience Development ORGANIC TRAFFIC Working with Keywee has helped New York Magazine cost-effectively scale its audience development efforts on Facebook for various sites such as The Cut and Vulture. By targeting Facebook audiences highly relevant to its content, New York Magazine has been able to optimize its paid social acquisition strategy and drive significant traffic to its sites. * according to Harvard s NiemanLab

5 > case #2 Finding brand loyalists at PureWow At first blush, the women s lifestyle website PureWow couldn t be more different from New York Magazine. Founded less than a decade ago as a digital-only media site, PureWow is representative of a new crop of mobile-first publishers whose business models are largely built on ad sales. As a result, PureWow is committed to driving newsletter signups and high-value engagements such as comments, shares and likes. PureWow reports that the traffic Keywee drives to its site converts at the second-highest rate for signups and that readers who sign up for the mailing list are more likely to become brand loyalists. Keywee s click-through rates were 50 times higher than the next-best solution and high-value engagement exceeded event PureWow s own Facebook page by 1.5 times.

6 > case #2 At the most basic level, [Keywee] finds the right audience for the content. There s an audience for every piece of content out there. You just have to find it. Anna Lee PureWow provides Keywee a maximum cost per click (CPC) to amplify its stories on Facebook, adjusting the CPC ceiling as needed to adapt to changing market needs. Keywee s software does the rest, finding audiences and publishing paid posts. PureWow tracks the campaign s performance in Keywee s dashboard, which shows impressions, clicks and shares for each story. As AdExchanger reported: The ratios between partners change every month depending on what content is performing, Lee said. Which a relatively fixed amount of marketing spend each month, that means the most efficient traffic drivers win. And lately, that s been Keywee.