“They live and die by these clicks,” he says Bobby Calder, emeritus professor of marketing at Kellogg. “They fire people if they don’t get clicks.”
But in a study of US local news outlets, Calder and his colleagues argue that engagement can’t be measured simply by click volume. They define engagement as the meaningful experiences a user can get from a piece of content. For example, some people may appreciate a comforting routine of regularly reading the news, while others appreciate knowing what’s happening in their local community.
In two studies, researchers found that people who read the news for these two reasons—which they call regularity and locality—were more likely to pay for a subscription than people who read for other reasons. In fact, they even found evidence that reading articles unrelated to regularity and locality could actually make someone more likely to cancel their subscription. While researchers don’t know exactly why these reading experiences might be so unpleasant, one possibility is that these articles were generic filler material that wasn’t worth paying for. “They turn people off,” says Calder
News organizations need to look beyond the total number of clicks to assess whether readers are truly engaged, the team concluded. “Only a few of the clicks matter,” he says.
Calder and his colleagues provide a road map for news organizations to follow to ensure their readers get what they want and allow the publication to remain profitable.
What will people pay?
Local news coverage in the United States has plummeted over the past two decades. From 2008 to 2018, the number of staff in these newsrooms fell by almost half. Today, about two-thirds of US counties no longer have a local daily newspaper. This trend has raised concerns that citizens are less informed about their communities and therefore less likely to participate in political activities.
Advertising revenue has also declined, meaning newspapers have had to figure out how to increase subscriptions. “You have to get people to pay or you’re out of business,” says Calder.
Attracting subscribers requires increased engagement, which the team defines as the cumulative effect of experiences that connect to a user’s values ​​or help them take a step toward a goal. But the experience people want to get from any particular market can vary depending on what they buy. For example, they might buy a stapler for purely utilitarian purposes, a teapot because it’s pretty to look at, or knitting needles so they can join a craft group. Often, they seek multiple experiences from the same purchase, so they may purchase an item that is both useful and aesthetically pleasing. In short, the key to branding any product is understanding the experiences people engage in with that product.
So what kind of experiences do people want to have when reading the news?
Calder, Edward Malthouse at Northwestern University, and other researchers have explored this question in previous studies. Some participants liked the routine of reading the news regularly or said that the articles gave them things to talk about with their spouse or colleagues. Other participants valued the experience of being more aware of their local environment, feeling connected to a community, immersing themselves in a different world, receiving useful information or advice, or learning something new and surprising.
But what experiences actually drive people to pay for a subscription? To find out, Calder and Malthouse turned to a dataset they collected in a 2012 study. Their team surveyed about 11,000 people who read local newspapers in the United States. Some participants were subscribers, while others only read content they could get for free. the researchers also tracked who had canceled their subscription during the study period.
In this research, researchers asked people to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how strongly they agreed with statements that they read the news about various experiences identified in previous tasks—for example, those related to normality , location, chat topics, and so on. The higher the score, the more strongly the person agreed that they read the news for that reason.
For the current study, Calder and Malthouse’s team analyzed which of the same factors were associated with willingness to pay. The team included Yayu Zhou, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern, and Yasaman Kamyab Hessary, a postdoc at Northwestern at the time.
They found that regularity had the strongest relationship with enrollment (rather than cancellation). That is, people who said they read the news because they enjoyed it as part of their regular routine were more likely to pay for the content. High scores for location, feeling connected, and learning useful information were also associated with an increased likelihood of enrollment.
Good clicks, bad clicks
The team now knew what factors people valued and were likely to lead to subscriptions. But how exactly would they assess whether a particular user was getting these content experiences at any given time?
Click data could still be useful. But instead of just looking at overall volume, the researchers wanted to identify specific click patterns that reflect those experiences.
They decided to focus on regularity and locality because previous analysis had suggested that these factors were among the most important in driving subscriptions. Regularity could be measured as the number of days a person clicked on at least one article on a news site each month. And locality could be measured as the number of times the person clicked on articles that were flagged as covering local topics.
To confirm that the new click metrics were linked to people’s willingness to pay, the team collected data on two online local news sites in the United States. One data set followed 3,160 subscribers for 26 months and the second followed 6,994 subscribers for 13 months. For each user, the researchers could see which pages were clicked and when. They could also see which users had canceled their subscription at some point during the study period.
The team converted the raw click data into monthly regularity and locality scores for each individual. They found that if a user scored higher on these measures, they were less likely to cancel their subscription. Those two factors “keep people reading,” says Calder.
The team also looked at “residual” clicks. These were all the clicks that remained after extracting the clicks related to regularity and locality.
These remaining clicks were associated with an increased likelihood of cancellation. “They really make you stop reading the news,” says Calder.
The researchers didn’t mind because these articles might be wrong. But one possibility is that they were generic stories from a wire service, which would also be available from many other sources. People who clicked on these stories may have felt they could get the same content for free elsewhere, causing them to cancel their subscription.
With these articles, “if you’re maximizing your clicks, you’re actually maximizing your downfall,” Calder says.
Encourage regular reading
Finally, the team explored what interventions could help a newspaper increase regularity among its readers. For example, perhaps creating a daily email newsletter would encourage a reading habit and maintain subscriptions.
To find out, they analyzed data on about 5,800 subscribers to another online local news site, which had built more than 600 newsletter lists. In the dataset, they could see which users had signed up for which newsletter during the 16-month study period.
Subscribing to newsletters on topics such as local news, sports, and family was associated with higher regularity. But the team couldn’t say for sure whether sign-ups caused regular reading or whether regular reading prompted people to sign up. To disentangle these possibilities, news organizations or researchers should conduct more experiments—for example, following a group of subscribers who can sign up for a newsletter and another group who cannot.
Smarter metrics
The team suggests that news and other content providers follow a process similar to the one used in this research to increase engagement.
First, interview readers or viewers to find out what experiences they want. “The only way to really detect engagement is to ask people,” says Calder. Answers may vary depending on output and media type. Users of streaming videos may value immersion more, while readers of a home improvement magazine may prioritize learning useful information.
Second, figure out how to measure those experiences. For example, if people value learning about topics they can bring up in social situations, a relevant measure might be the number of times an article is shared via email or social media. Or the news organization could mark articles as “social” if they cover topics that generate conversation, such as a controversial political decision, and then track clicks on those types of stories.
Third, verify that these new measures are related to willingness to pay for subscriptions (or reduced likelihood of cancellation). Fourth, tailor content to deliver more of these experiences. For example, if users value novelty, the store could search for stories about surprising topics. Finally, track the new metrics and see if engagement is increasing as expected.
“You have to start really optimizing your content to be attractive to people if you want them to pay for it,” says Calder.
