Readers don’t stay on a news site that makes them hunt around for something interesting to read. They want you to do work for them by making a recommendation.
Once they’re on your site, they might read multiple articles, which gives you a chance to make a lasting impression and, ideally, convert them into subscribers. That’s especially important now, with subscriptions becoming a primary revenue driver for the industry.
Plus, keeping readers on-site lets you control how your content is presented, without the risk of it getting chopped up or misinterpreted on social media. You get to tell your story the way you intended, which builds trust in your brand. Getting someone to stick around comes down to smart editorial choices, personalization for each individual, and grabbing their attention before they click away.
1. Build your site with personalization in mind
Each reader that visits your site should have a unique experience to some degree, but you should balance that personalization with curation so you don’t cause the same echo chambers as social giants.
Editorial curation alone, though, isn’t enough to capture the kind of attention that keeps readers on-site for more than one article. Social media has trained readers to expect some level of algorithmic personalization, and miss opportunities to keep them on-site if you don’t provide it.
Gray Television increases pageviews per session across 115 sites with AI-powered personalization
Gray Television (TV), the US’s largest owner of local TV stations, collectively reaches approximately 36% of US households. While they value editorial curation, Gray TV didn’t want to add more responsibility to their digital content producers’ already-full plates. In fact, they wanted to give them more time to create high-quality news for the communities that rely on them.
They used Taboola technology to increase the number of pageviews per session across 115 websites. For You is the technology that provides artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommendations to readers on homepages, section fronts, and articles based on reader behavior from the entirety of Taboola’s network.
Gray TV ultimately saw a 20% increase in article pageviews per session, 22% uplift in homepage click-through-rate (CTR) and a 5% reduction in homepage bounce rate across all sites.
For you works by giving each reader content that’s both relevant to the news cycle and personalized to their interests. Getting granular, our recirculation algorithm has the power to personalize content experiences based on editorial policies and users’ locations, interests, and past sessions.
“Our weekly reports are right on target if not above the estimated lift that Taboola provided at the beginning of this process. The short answer is, it’s working.” – Glen Hale, Vice President of Digital Content & Audience Development, Gray Television
While AI provides an unprecedented leg up for newsrooms that have struggled to meet the personalization expectations, publications like McClatchy and The New York Times value a balance of editorial curation.
McClatchy increases pageviews per session by balancing editorial curation with personalization
McClatchy is a US-based media group that attracts over 65 million monthly readers across iconic brands like the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, and more.
At one time the traffic they were getting from platforms like Google and Facebook had high bounce rates. The expected traffic drops from these sources put them at risk of slowing growth or even declining. They needed the right tools to get readers from these sources to stick around.
They used For You to implement AI-powered recommendations, but in a way that was designed to complement editors’ own expert curation across their sites’ homepages. Their editorial team retained full control of For You’s setup. One of For You’s tools is built for editors to review algorithmic decisions and “teach” the algorithm based on their knowledge and experience.
“None of our other partners at the time offered that personalization option — not the way Taboola did with the AI and training the algorithm,” said DuBose. “Taboola is the first partner that we found that could do that.” – McClatchy Ramps Up Homepage Engagement on Election Night with Taboola Homepage For You
McClatchy’s editors can choose to enable or disable AI-based personalization on different parts of the homepage, so they can tailor the combination of AI-powered content and curated content.
This strategy increased their pageviews per session by 15%. They also saw a 25% increase in their homepage CTR and a 9% increase in new subscriptions as a direct result of personalization.
“How we defined engagement has now changed,” DuBose said. “We’re not just looking at click-through-rates but also return visitors (…) For You has had a great impact on (…) how we think about the future of our platform. Can we personalize newsletters? What other channels do we take time to update manually? Is there an algorithm to help with that now? Or is there a way to do it smarter?”
McClatchy’s success is supported by research from the DOI Foundation. They found that news readers in Europe sometimes preferred curated content over algorithmic, because they feared missing out on important information or diverse viewpoints. In France, Germany, and the UK, more than 62% of readers felt a balance of curation and personalization to be “just right.”
2. Use tech that gives readers more chances to engage before leaving
Research from Social Science Computer Review found that while readers find news through search and social media most of the time, on-site algorithms influence their engagement by leading them to read news they didn’t intend to read in the first place.
Personalization technology like For You can help you convince readers from those referral sources to stick around, but you don’t want to miss out on other opportunities, like visitors from dark social.
Taboola’s Explore More is inspired by native in-app experiences like those in WhatsApp or Google Chat. It’s designed to help news sites keep readers on mobile pages longer by directing them to a page that recommends more content before they click back to the originating app.
Grupo Atlántida is a major media company based in Argentina, known for its extensive portfolio in print, digital, and broadcast media across Latin America
They wanted to find more ways to keep on-site readers engaged without disrupting their experience with annoying technology that gets in the way of what they came for.
They use Explore More to keep readers from dark social engagement, which increased their on-site CTR by 70% and accounts for 31% of their total monthly recirculation clicks across their portfolio of websites.
INN, a leader in innovative news technology in Israel, found similar success. Explore More increased their total organic CTR by 20% in seven months and their revenue per mille (RPM) by 6%.
3. Power personalized recommendations with high-quality news
Every editorial department knows that the foundation of reader engagement is covering the right stories. Personalization technology alone won’t do much without providing the editor’s insight about what they should cover in the first place.
Zee Media, one of India’s largest media conglomerates, is known for its extensive network of TV channels and news sites. They get insight into what readers really want to see using Newsroom, technology that helps writers, editors, and section teams make informed decisions to increase readership.
They use Newsroom to compare and contrast their planned daily articles with what is trending among readers, insights from a massive data set of over 500 million daily active users across all Taboola’s partners. They also keep a close eye on their highest performing articles and make sure they place in the most impactful positions on their homepage and within their website.
“Integrating data and technology in content development workflow is the key to building the right content. Taboola Newsroom has been one of the important tools that have helped us in this journey towards integrating data, technology and content”, says Zee Digital’s CEO Rohit Chadda.
Today, between 15% and 20% of Zee Media’s total stories come directly from Newsroom because when their editorial team receives an alert from Taboola Newsroom, they act quickly. In just one example, their team creates a story about a public figure based on a Newsroom alert, and that story generated 4% of the site’s traffic for the day.
“Taboola Newsroom is an important alert system for us. Previously, we would actively go and check out stories on other websites, which of course we still do to some extent, but having this alert system significantly narrows down our search.” – Priyarag Verma, Digital Editor, Zee News and DNA India
When you make the right editorial decisions in the first place, the personalization and engagement technology that keeps readers on-site becomes that much more effective.
To keep news readers on-site, blend personalization with expertise
To keep readers on a news site in 2024, you’ve got to go beyond the basics and commit to a strategy where data-driven recommendations meet sharp editorial insight. Relying solely on one approach misses the mark: personalization without context risks pushing readers into algorithmic bubbles, while editorial curation alone won’t satisfy today’s reader expectations for quick, relevant content.
If you use both, you can create a dynamic experience that keeps readers on-site, while upholding the integrity of your content. Newsrooms that implement this strategy aren’t just adopting a trend; they’re defining the new standard for news engagement.
The next article in this series will cover re-engaging readers once they’ve left your site. If you’re ready to lead with a strategy that puts readers first, contact us to start building a custom approach.