What COVID-19 has done to the news Jill Nicholson Dir. of Customer Education jill@chartbeat.com April 2020
WHO WE ARE We enable meaningful stories to thrive — wherever they live 700 enterprise publishers 50 billion pageviews tracked per month 70 Countries 6 Continents 2
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY We analyzed 87 billion pageviews on 27.7 million articles, including 1.7 million articles about COVID-19 * This analysis is based on aggregated and anonymized data pulled from global media sites that work with Chartbeat and allow us to use this data for research purposes. *Articles containing the entities Coronaviru', COVID19, Covid19 and keywords '%coronavirus%' OR keywords LIKE '%Coronavirus%' OR keywords LIKE '%COVID-19%' OR keywords LIKE '%covid-19%' OR keywords LIKE '%Covid-19%' OR keywords LIKE '%novel coronavirus%' OR keywords LIKE '%corona-virus%' OR keywords LIKE '%Koronaviruss Covid-19%' OR keywords LIKE '%covid 19%' OR keywords LIKE '%COVID%' OR keywords LIKE '%koronaviruss%' OR keywords LIKE '%covid%' OR keywords LIKE '%covid19%' OR keywords LIKE '%koronavirus%' OR keywords LIKE '%corona virus%' OR keywords LIKE '%2019-nCoV%' OR keywords LIKE '%koroonaviirus%' OR keywords LIKE '%COVID 19%' OR keywords LIKE '%Covid-19%' OR keywords LIKE '%Covid19%' OR keywords LIKE '%COVID19%' OR keywords LIKE '%nCoV%' OR keywords LIKE '%Covid 19%' OR keywords LIKE '%CORONAVIRUS%' OR keywords LIKE '%2019 nCoV%' OR keywords LIKE '%2019-nCoV ARD%' OR keywords LIKE '%SARS-CoV-2%' 3 3
AGENDA We’ll investigate how reader engagement has changed: How much people are reading Where they are finding content Which topics are most engaging 4
Trends in coverage & traffic 5
TRAFFIC TRENDS Though coverage dipped over the weekend, the number of articles produced on weekdays is still more than 86K per day. The growth in coverage slowed this week, with only 3% more articles than the previous week. 6
TRAFFIC TRENDS As of the week of March 23, COVID-19 articles receive about 32% of all pageviews, similar to previous week in terms of proportion, but down in terms of raw traffic (-6.4%). 7
TRAFFIC TRENDS Traffic to COVID-19 articles in Italy has been steadily dropping since March 11, as the country remains in a long-term lockdown Down 17% week over week 8
TRAFFIC TRENDS In the US, traffic peaked days after stay-at-home orders in San Francisco and New York, and has declined at a much slower rate than Italy Down 9.4% week over week 9
Referrer trends 10
REFERRER TRENDS Search traffic to COVID-19 articles has been trending down since March 6. Social traffic has been peaking on Mondays, then slowly decreasing throughout the week (down 18% from Monday to Thursday). 11
REFERRER TRENDS In terms of traffic, Google Search continues to drive an average of 500 million daily pageviews, compared to 230 million for Facebook. 12
REFERRER TRENDS Average Engaged Time from Google Search is notably higher than average engagement from Facebook. 40s GOOGLE SEARCH 30s FACEBOOK 13
REFERRER TRENDS Google Search traffic has been relatively stable week over week, but Facebook numbers have decreased Total Referrer Pageviews Engaged Time -0.2% -1% Google Search -8% -4.5% Facebook 14
REFERRER TRENDS Referrers ranked by traffic on March 27 (same order as previous week): 1. Google News 2. Google Chrome Suggestions 3. Twitter 4. Bing 5. Flipboard 6. Smart News 7. Yahoo 15
REFERRER TRENDS Referrer Week-over-week Change Most referrers are +25% SmartNews driving less traffic than the previous week, with +4% Yahoo only Smart News, Yahoo, and Flipboard +1% Flipboard seeing increases. -1% Google Chrome Suggestions -3% Bing -4% Google News -6% Twitter 16
Engagement & topic trends 17
TRAFFIC TRENDS COVID -19 articles account for about 34% of Total Engaged Time. 18
TRAFFIC TRENDS They also have a higher Average Engaged Time than general articles, showing how valuable this content is to readers. 40s COVID-19 ARTICLES 35s ALL OTHER ARTICLES 19
CONTENT TRENDS Total Engaged Time on COVID-19 articles decreased 3.7% compared to the previous week. Most popular terms in coronavirus coverage: 1. Wuhan 2. NHS 3. CDC 4. ISSO 5. World Health Organization 6. Hubei 20
CONTENT TRENDS Almost half the engagement on the top 100 stories went to live blogs % of % of Top traffic Type Top 100 engagement source Articles 49% 35% Various Live blogs 39% 45% Internal Infographics 8% 12% Search Longform 4% 7% Social 21
CONTENT TRENDS Previous research shows the type of content people consume is different on each platform: Homepage Search Social • Breaking updates • Factual content • Human stories Live blogs • Personally relevant • Emotional content • information • Social apps • Interactives & infographics 22
CONTENT TRENDS Most popular terms in non-coronavirus coverage: News Sports Entertainment • World leaders • Soccer • Celebrities Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Premier League, Liverpool, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Jair Bolsonaro Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Manchester City • Entertainment US Politics • Hollywood, Netflix • Basketball Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Congress, Senate, Democratic, NBA • Social apps Republican Instagram, Whatsapp 23
Key takeaways 24
KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Growth in coverage and traffic has started to slow, particularly in countries that have been hit hard by the virus. 2. By country, traffic tends to climb quickly as the virus spreads, but peaks within days of a lockdown. 3. The Google environment is by far the dominant source of traffic. 4. Engagement is higher on content that is directly related to coronavirus, but other topics have been steadily growing. 25
RESOURCES Where to get more info: ● Email your Customer Success Manager ● Learn more about Chartbeat by contacting hello@chartbeat.com Stay up to date with Chartbeat’s research on our blog: blog.chartbeat.com 26
Thank you. Jill Nicholson Dir. of Customer Education jill@chartbeat.com @tumbling_after chartbeat.com
Recommend
More recommend
