Blog: Digital News Platforms Still Present Opportunity For Marketers

The news may be unpredictable, but its appeal to consumers is not: 92% of consumers use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, according to the Pew Research Center.

As I point out in my new demographic report “The Digital News Audience: 24/7 Participation,” these highly engaged consumers see news as a form of social currency and even as a civic obligation. Their need to keep up with current events has them searching out digital news throughout the day, checking in with more than one outlet on more than one device.

Pew found that 75% of US adults got their news from one or more traditional media “yesterday” literally, the day before the survey was taken, and 44% used one or more digital platforms.

While online advertising has now surpassed overall newspaper ad spending, according to eMarketer estimates released December 20, newspaper and other news sites are still a viable place to advertise.

For marketers, the appeal of the online news audience is in its demographics: predominantly male, between 30 and 64 years, and well-educated, according to Pew.

More young adults ages 18 to 24 check out online news than seniors ages 65 and older, too.

Brand marketers looking to target young, educated males would do well to use digital news platforms and email rather than social networks. News sites are also good places to find educated women in their 30s and 40s who have careers and children—and very little time to spend on social networking relative to younger online females.

Social media offers brand marketers creative ways to reach the news audience, but a distinctly different one. Here, females are more likely than males to get news on social sites, and a younger audience is posting and re-posting links to various news stories.

They see social media playing a vital role for monitoring news: 90.4% of social media users told TEKGroup International that these channels are important or somewhat important for following the news. Of course, the sample was comprised solely of social media users, which does color the results depending on one’s perspective.

The importance to marketers is that this audience is very, very interested in tracking news via social channels.

The downside in news sites for marketers is the volatility of the news itself. While online news sites attract many internet users, marketers can find their brand messages appearing alongside some very unflattering content. To counter that, marketers should have a contingency clause in place that requires online publishers to remove or reposition ads away from adverse stories.

The bottom line: Online news sites are a proven place to attract males, young people and women in their 30s and 40s. Many younger women look to social sites for their news.

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Article: Email Still Tops Facebook for Keeping in Touch

Content-sharing has become a staple of internet usage for most online adults. Research from Chadwick Martin Bailey found that three-quarters of web users are likely to share content with friends and family, and nearly half do so at least once a week. But while much social networking content is built around such shared items, most people still prefer to use email to pass along items of interest.

Overall, 86% of survey respondents said they used email to share content, while just 49% said they used Facebook. Broken down by age, the preference for email is more pronounced as users get older. And only the youngest group polled, those ages 18 to 24, reverses the trend, with 76% sharing via Facebook, compared with 70% via email.

Earlier research from StrongMail and ShareThis also found email was still on top for content-sharing. Other studies have shown that, when limited to sharing on social sites, Facebook is No. 1.

Asked what gets them to share content online, web users polled by Chadwick Martin Bailey revealed selfish motivations. Rather than focusing on sharing content they thought the recipients would find helpful or relevant (58%), most respondents cared more about what they thought was interesting or amusing (72%). Asked to select the single biggest reason they shared content, the greatest percentage of respondents (45%) again said it was because they enjoyed it. Men and women reported similar reasons for sharing, but motivations varied by age. The oldest respondents cared more about the value of content to recipients: 67% of those ages 55 and older said they shared items because they would be useful to recipients, compared with just 45% of 18- to 24-year-olds.

This difference in sharing motivation could have a relationship to the method of sharing. Email is a more targeted form of sending content; while content-sharers may shoot off mass emails to large distribution lists, most email shares are likely sent to a person or small group selected based on the specific content being shared.

Sharing via social networks like Facebook, by contrast, typically involves feeding items to an entire friends list. The youngest users, who care the least about whether the recipients of their content actually want to see it, are also most likely to disseminate the information to the widest group. And the seniors and older boomers who find the recipients' needs more important dramatically favor email for sharing, suggesting they are sending relevant items to only those who will want them.

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Check out today’s other article, “Food, Drink and Entertainment Top Brand Discussions.”

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