Josh Schwartz, Chief Data Scientist at Chartbeat, discusses building loyal audiences in the age of distributed content on the main stage at ONA 2016.

1. Audience Building in the
Age of Platforms
Josh Schwartz, Chartbeat
@joshuadschwartz
September 17, 2016 #ONA16CB

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INTRODUCTION
This talk
■ Traffic from platforms over
time
■ Where and when people are
reading
■ How platforms change what
content people read
■ Audience loyalty
...and plenty of time for questions

4. PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC
Across our network
■ Over 75% of external, non-dark
traffic comes from the top 5
referrers
Exceptions
■ Pinterest drives as much as 15–20%
of external traffic to Fashion, Decor,
and Food sites
■ LinkedIn drives as much as 10–15%
of traffic to Business sites
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5. PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC
Despite algorithm changes,
total traffic driven by
platforms has been constant
over the last year
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6. PLATFORMS AND TRAFFIC
Despite algorithm changes,
total traffic driven by
platforms has been constant
over the last year
...but at a site level, individual
sites have seen an average
74% variance in Facebook
traffic between their best and
worst months
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7. CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
Facebook-referred traffic is nearly all mobile. Google is roughly an even split.
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CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
And time of day is very different
Facebook peaks at night. Google is steady throughout the day.

9. CONTENT DIFFERENCES
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What we search for
is nearly limitless,
whereas social
sharing is much
more narrow

10. CONTENT DIFFERENCES
Except during
breaking news,
where search and
social have very
similar profiles
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11. CONTENT DIFFERENCES
During breaking news, search
traffic often reacts even more
quickly than social traffic
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12. CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
Three types of search:
■ Evergreen
■ Direct / branded search
■ New stories
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13. CONSUMPTION PATTERNS
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AMP traffic, though, is much
more news-heavy

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CONTENT DIFFERENCES
The perspectives of what we
write about, what we search
for, and what we share are
completely different

15. AUDIENCE LOYALTY
On large sites, direct visitors are more than twice as likely
to return as other visitors
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AUDIENCE LOYALTY
Facebook traffic varies in loyalty
by type of site:
■ Non-English sites, and many
sports sites, have much
higher loyalty than
traditional news and lifestyle
sites
■ Larger social audiences are
less loyal

17. Search topics that bring new visitors who
come back in the next week:
■ Highest performers (>10%)
▸ Non-English sites
▸ Tech content on tech sites
▸ Political content on polarized
sites
Ailes coverage on left-leaning
sites, Clinton Foundation
coverage on right-leaning sites
■ Lowest performers (<6%)
▸ Commodity viral news
(e.g. Ryan Lochte)
▸ Harambe
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Search visitors vary significantly
in loyalty depending on the
content they land on
AUDIENCE LOYALTY

18. ■ Algorithm changes have had minimal effects
on Facebook traffic on the whole, but many
publishers have seen wild traffic fluctuations
■ The set of pages getting search traffic is
vastly more diverse than those getting social
traffic
■ Social traffic concentrates on emotional
stories
■ There are significant variations in audience
loyalty between platforms
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CONCLUSION

19. ■ Algorithm changes have had minimal effects
on Facebook traffic on the whole, but many
publishers have seen wild traffic fluctuations
■ The set of pages getting search traffic is
vastly more diverse than those getting social
traffic
■ Social traffic concentrates on emotional
stories, search on informational stories
■ There are significant variations in audience
loyalty between platforms
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Questions?
Josh Schwartz
josh@chartbeat.com
@joshuadschwartz
press@chartbeat.com
CONCLUSION