We all see the articles that news outlets publish, the beats their reporters cover, the topics and brands that get picked up.
But what we don’t see is: what are people actually reading? What is breaking through the noise and what does this mean for communicators? That is, until now.
Readership measures unique visitors to an article page. Meaning, how many people actually engaged with a news cycle or saw a brand’s coverage. Some of the world’s biggest brands lean on readership to measure impact and guide their media strategies. For the first time ever, we’re releasing some of the readership trends previously only known to our customers.
What does readership tell us at a macro-level?
Memo analyzed readership on half a million articles. The findings are in our first-ever State of Media & Readership Report, which uncovers some of the actionable, data-backed insights to inform your media strategy in the year ahead.
Here are some of the big takeaways from the past year:
- Don’t make any assumptions about publications based on topic. Some publications drive consistently high readership around surprising topics.
- Don’t discount paywalls and syndicators. News aggregators and content syndicators increased readership by 41.8% in our sample. For paywalled content, syndicators boosted readership by over 100%.
- There’s little correlation between social engagement on an article and readership (0.18 in one analysis). In a separate analysis of over 600 articles on multiple brands, less than 10% of article traffic originated from social media.
- Wednesdays are the busiest news days. However, readership around brands spikes on Mondays, Fridays, and weekends. In fact, articles published on the weekends get 68% more readership.
- When a crisis arises, address it early and let the news cycle fade. Bad news drives readership. Balenciaga’s handling of its controversial ad campaign shows us that continued comments and actions around negative news drive increasingly higher readership.
We break down the top readership moments of the last year, the topics that drive brand and leadership coverage, headlines that break through the noise, and so much more.