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Yahoo Content Connections: What Premium Content Looks Like and Why It Matters

The document discusses Canadian consumers' online media habits and the relevance of quality content in a digital age. Key findings indicate that consumers still prioritize traditional needs for news, sports, and lifestyle content while employing new methods for discovering this information. Quality content, defined by factors like informativeness and readability, significantly influences user engagement and ad effectiveness on websites.

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Yahoo Content Connections: What Premium Content Looks Like and Why It Matters

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1 HOW & WHY ConsumersFind and Consume Content Online Nick Drew Head of Research, Yahoo! Canada #YahooResearch @YahooAdBuzzCA
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2 CANADIANS’ MEDIA HABITS Sources:TVB 2011/12, 2006/7; NADbank top 19 markets,; comScore Feb ’07, Feb ‘12 TELEVISION Watch 27.4hrs per week. Increase of 3% since 2007. NEWSPAPERS 12.2m weekly readers. Readership up 3% since 2007. INTERNET 65.7bn minutes a month spent on the internet. 14% increase since 2007.
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*comScore SPORTS NEWS THE WHOLE WORLDONLINE
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BUT SOME CONSTANTSSTILL REMAIN *comScore SPORTS NEWS More Canadians visit NEWS sites than use social networks each month The top 7 publishers account for more than half the time spent on SPORTS sites each month In the last 2 years, the share of time spent on the 10 biggest LIFESTYLE sites has grown by 60% 25% more Canadians use FINANCIAL NEWS sites now than did 3 years ago.
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THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS Is “quality content” still relevant to consumers who have the whole world at their fingertips?  And for online marketers, is quality of content still important, or do the tools available for efficient advertising make it redundant?
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7 WHAT WE DID Review of existing thinking.  In-depth discussions with experts.  Detailed qualitative work with Canadian consumers.  Quantitative study among 2,000 Canadian internet users.
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CONSUMERS STILL HAVETRADITIONAL NEEDS THESE ARE INTERNET USERS 66% ARE REGULAR ONLINE NEWS USERS 36% REGULARLY USE LIFESTYLE CONTENT ONLINE 22% ARE SPORTS FANS IN TOTAL, ARE ENGAGED ONLINE WITH SPORTS, NEWS OR LIFESTYLE 79%
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ENGAGEMENT COMES INSEVERAL FLAVOURS GOING DEEPER Delve into a particular topic; read several articles for analysis, perspective or opinion. 20% of internet users go deep with news online every day. CATCHING UP Quick check of headlines and what's happening. 54% of internet users catch up on news online each day. TAKING A BREAK Fill a little time, read an article or two, watch a couple of videos, check a handful of other sites. 53% of sports fans take a break with sports online most days.
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BOOKMARKSSHARING FORUMS LINKS IN EMAIL APPS TRADITIONAL NEEDS,NEW METHODS OF DISCOVERY Browsing content sites Direct to SPECIFIC PUBLISHERS 51% 58%
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CONTENT FOLLOWS PEOPLEACROSS DEVICES During the Olympics, 61% of the traffic to the (Canadian) consortium’s digital properties came from mobile devices (As reported 3rd August 2012) I really depend on 680 News and CP 24 News Alerts during the day… on my work phone m, 34 Usually before I go to bed, lying in bed, I have my laptop on the bed, I might read an article m, 28
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…AND THROUGH THEIRDAILY ROUTINES THE NEWS FAN
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THE SPORTS FAN …ANDTHROUGH THEIR DAILY ROUTINES
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THE LIFESTYLE FAN …ANDTHROUGH THEIR DAILY ROUTINES
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DISTINCTIONS EXIST BETWEENSOURCES
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HOW DO WEDEFINE THESE DISTINCTIONS? “ Expertise: it’s quality if the consumer learned something by watching or reading it. ” Jason Rapp, President, Maholo “What’s most important is timeliness, constant updating, relevance to the audience; aggregating, your expert voice, and… getting contributors …engaged in the conversation” Lewis Dvorkin, CPO Forbes “Consumers will decide whether it’s useful to them; and editors will decide whether the contributions… meet their standards.” Luke Beatty, TechStars
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COMPARING SOURCES
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BUT WHAT DOES‘QUALITY’ MEAN?HOW DO USERS COMPARE SITES? 46 43 42 40 39 33 31 31 30 25 22 21 9 7 4 0 10 20 30 40 50 Perceived quality of website (% saying high quality)
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BUT WHAT DOES‘QUALITY’ MEAN? LOW QUALITY SITES 9.6 HIGH QUALITY SITES 34.5 Likelihood to read webpage (% saying they would)
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Poor quality Trustworthy Informative Biased Insightful Features leading columnists/ writers For someone likeme Well- organised Well-written Worth sharing WHAT MAKES IT WORTH READING? Easy to read Believable Annoying Entertaining Easy to navigate Has something for everyone Something I’m interested in Funny Inspiring Provides original viewpoints Sensationalistic Provides local info Visually Appealing Popular Worth paying for Has enough detail Has a good reputation Frequently updated
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Inspiring 24% 11% Inspiring 24% Easy to read80% 35% Informative 77% 30% Well written Wellwritten 74% 33% Insightful Insightful 51% 21% Entertaining Entertaining 42% 22% Worth sharing Worth sharing 57% 23% 42% 15% COMPARING SOURCES High quality sites Low quality sites
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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Category 1 Category3 Category 2 Visually Appealing 65% 18% About Something I’m interested In 65% 18% 55% 13% For someone like me48% 13% COMPARING SOURCES High quality sites Low quality sites
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WHAT DOES QUALITYMEAN FOR BRANDS?
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REALLY?
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49 30 ADS ARE MOREMEMORABLE 10 5 High quality sites Low quality sites
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TRUSTWORTHY 25 31 High quality sitesLow quality sites POOR QUALITY 19 10 VISUALLY APPEALING 29 39 16 29 GOOD FIT WITH THE SITE ENTERTAINING 11 17 …AND THEY’RE SEEN MORE FAVOURABLY
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ULTIMATELY, ADS HAVEA GREATER IMPACT 6 4 9 6 High quality sites Low quality sites
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BRINGING IT ALLTOGETHER  Consumers still have traditional needs for news, sports, financial news and lifestyle content.  Ways of discovering this content have changed, but how users determine what’s worth their time has not.  Websites that provide informative, well-written, believable and well- laid out content are seen as better sources.  Ads benefit from this source quality  …and perform significantly better on high-quality sites.
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#YahooResearch @YahooAdBuzzCA Nick Drew Head ofResearch, Yahoo! Canada ndrew@yahoo-inc.com

Editor's Notes

#2 Hello, intro. Spend a lot of time understanding consumer behaviour – what people do, how they consume media, how they shop, and so on.
#3 Media consumption in Canada continues to grow. First surprise, it’s not quite as we might expect. PP, Canadians watch more TV than they did 5 years ago; there are more newspaper readers than there were 5 years ago; and internet use has grown (but perhaps not as much as we’d expected). 2520mins pp to 2554mins pp.
#4 Focusing just on the internet, Canadians do a huge number of things online. Activities are becoming more sophisticated: retail category growing rapidly; online banking continues to grow, across devices, with more apps and mobile-friendly pages; and photo-sharing is also racing along – again, across devices (Instagram, Flickr). But even as internet consumption changes, we see that consumers still also have quite traditional needs. More Canadians visit a news website each month than a social network. The number of people going to financial news websites has grown 25% in the last 3 years; and sports and lifestyle remain important content categories online. Within these areas, we also see consumers gravitating towards the largest publishers – top 6 sports publishers account for the majority of time spent on sports sites, the top 10 finance sites take more than half the time Canadians spend on financial news online, and so on.
#5 Just seen, in print, newspapers are doing well; magazines also continue to sell well (almost 8/10 CA read magazine each month). More and more also going online for this kind of newspaper-level or magazine-style content: news sites going from strength to strength (4% since start 2010; social networks 1%). Financial news also growing significantly; In sports, big sports brands still account for the majority of time spent in the sports category; and in lifestyle too, consumers are gravitating towards the big publishers’ sites. So people consuming content online; and tending towards the big names in each category.
#6 So there’s a real polarisation of behaviour in these areas online. And we can see it in our own activities. If, for example, we hear about a celebrity death, many of us hear first through a social platform such as Twitter or Facebook because of their real-time nature. And then for most of us, the very next thing we do is go to a more established news channel, to validate what we’ve heard, and get the full story. So there are some interesting dynamics going on in how people approach these topics online, and it’s these dynamics we really wanted to understand with this research.
#7 Because offline, we have a pretty good idea of what people want in content: what they’re reading in newspapers, what they’re looking for in news coverage, sports analysis, finance and business news, and so on. But online, it’s less clear. Is the idea of ‘quality content’ still relevant to consumers who have all these tools at their fingertips? How can news providers and sports channels such as Yahoo! tailor their products and approach in order to fulfil today’s consumers’ needs? And for marketers too. Offline, we know that content and environment are important considerations in planning marketing strategies – Playboy magazine and the Financial Post are very different titles for advertisers, even if they reached a similar demographic target. How does this translate online: is content still important for advertisers, or do tools such as Real-Time-Bidding and more efficient targeting make such concepts redundant? These are the questions we set out to answer with this research, working with DIG Insights and Dine Discoveries. And I’ll now hand over to Catherine Dine to talk you through how we approached this problem.
#8 Developed this research to do just that, reading existing research and thinking in the industry; speaking to experts in the field, speaking to Canadian consumers themselves.
#9 Research (AYTM MR Jan ‘13, ref eMarketer) suggests that 39% of US internet users read news online every day; From our own research, we saw that 58% of Canadian internet users say they visit news site regularly, 95% do so at least occasionally. About 1/4 said they have an excellent knowledge of News, and 9/10 said they have excellent or good knowledge. Combining these two measures, found that 66% of Canadian internet users can be classified as ‘news users’ – that is, visit news sites and have an interest/ knowledge of news. Similar analysis on lifestyle content, we found that about 1/3 of CA net users are lifestyle users – content on health, wellness, fashion, cooking and so on. And 22% are sports fans (46% ‘high or low’ involvement); obviously a bit more clear cut. In total, 8 out of 10 Canadians engage with at least one of these topics online regularly.
#10 Found from this and previous research, that the majority of people’s interaction with news, sports and lifestyle content online can be categorised into one of 3 types of engagement. Catchup – quick check of what’s going on in the world. 54% ‘net users catch up on the news online each day (20% sports, 70% sports FANS) Break – taking 5 or 10 minutes to read a few articles, watch a video or 2, perhaps browse a couple of sites. Less frequent; 39% news, 53% sports fans, 16% lifestyle daily. Go deep – least frequent; taking the time to delve into a particular topic, get a few different viewpoints, or several articles, a few different sites. 20% news daily; 18% lifestyle daily; 62% lifestyle fans weekly; ¾ sports fans weekly).
#11 Growing sophistication of ‘net; consumers growing more sophisticated too. Social sources increasingly important as a way of discovering news events, sports stories, new recipes etc, and as a way of circulating things worth sharing. Half of our respondents said they regularly use social channels to find news, sports or lifestyle articles, videos etc. 16% regularly share content. The other main way of finding this kind of content is by going direct to particular sites – so, for example, going to globeandmail.com, or Yahoo!, and browsing around to see what’s new. 58% said this is a key way they find news stories etc. Search is also a key channel, particularly when it comes to finding updates on something you already know about – the NHL lockout, for example. And apps are growing in stature too, and lead neatly into the next slide
#12 As smartphone and tablet penetration grows, so more Canadians are consuming this kind of content on a range of devices – whatever’s most convenient for where they are/ time of day. During the Olympics last year, it was reported that nearly 2/3 of the traffic on the consortium’s websites (CTV, TSN, Sportsnet etc) came from mobile devices. Given the timing of events, it makes sense – people checking up during the day; on public transport, in between meetings etc. And we saw from our research that people use mobile apps as a way of keeping up with news, finance as well. In the US, 47% of smartphone users access weather information each week, 29% local news and 24% national news
#13 Bringing it all together we begin to build a picture of how this content fits into people’s daily lives. For the news junkie, she checks FB on her phone first thing, sees if there’s any big news both socially or in the world; has the TV on in the background over breakfast. Takes a break at lunch, browses around a couple of news websites to see what’s going on, and in the evening catches the headlines on TV.
#14 The sports fan might catch the sports headlines on the radio in the morning; again, at lunch check on the latest developments in the NHL, or get some analysis for the Superbowl …and in the evening, spend some time checking out videos and commentary on his team, or watch a game. (Ref Jason, Video research?)
#15 Lifestyle is perhaps a little more esoteric, but again, we found that for those people who engage with it, it really is part of their daily habits, seeing what’s new in the world of celebrity, finding recipes for the evening, checking out top health and fitness tips. And of course, people aren’t restricted to just one or two genres – I might check out the headlines on the bus in the morning, read more news over lunch; check out some sports headlines mid-afternoon, and then in the evening spend some time looking for recipes for dinner, and so on.
#16 CATHERINE So where did we net out - we had uncovered numerous nuances and dynamics by individual and for specific genres but we also saw patterns common to all. One of the main ones was the when and why of choosing between sources. During Hurricane Sandy, Twitter and Facebook had a very different role for people than sites like the NYT or Yahoo! News. Twitter was very much about those hyper-local, very personal updates – was the power on your street back up; for comprehensive overviews, analysis, people went to more established news sources. We saw this distinction across news, sports, lifestyle – these differences in consumers’ minds between sites they use more for DISCOVERY, and those they see as better sources for THE BIG PICTURE - news headlines, sports analysis, fashion trends and so on. We also saw common elements around complex behaviours, seemingly random site selection, the importance of relevance and individual backgrounds and needs. We also identified underlying drivers in perceptions of QUALITY CONTENT. Taking the more commen elements we developed a survey mechanism that could capture and clarify what was really happening in consumer relationships with online content and their need for and perceptions of QUALITY CONTENT. True clarity came in the form of an artfully crafted survey and rigorous experiment to prove the drivers of QUALITY CONTENT and its IMPACT ON ADVERTISING. I’ll let Dominic take you through this final stage of the research where the clouds lifted and we truly saw the light. THROW TO DOMINIC: To help demystify this notion of “quality”, we decided to allow consumers to guide us. Introduce Dominic & quant process…..
#17 But when you try to understand why that is, or how we might define a framework of what makes some sites better, more useful, or more highly-regarded than others, it’s difficult. We kinda know, what makes some sites more useful for news than others; we can perhaps sort of explain why one sports site better than another; and if we’re really pushed, we can describe a couple of things we like about one lifestyle site over another, but different people would explain it in different ways. Even industry experts can’t agree on what makes some sources better than others for this kind of content – is it expertise, is it frequent updating, is it relevance: or is it something else that consumers decide by themselves?
#18 we explored this in more detail. Essentially, built an experiment – gathered 15 websites, showed them to our respondents, and compared them. 5 sites for news, and from each site chose a page about an earthquake in Central America. G&M, Y! News, the Sun (UK), and a couple of UGC sites. For sports, we picked 5 pages from different sites about the NHL lockout, incl TSN, Y! Sports and 3 others; and for lifestyle we chose different sites’ coverage of flu season and flu remedies. Basically, we showed our respondents a handful of these different pages, based on their interests, and asked them what they thought of them
#19 when we asked our respondents to give us a gut feel of the quality of each site they saw, there was a definite pecking order. At the top, more established publishers like globeandmail.com, TSN, Y! News scored very highly in perceptions of quality. At the bottom, we had ugc sites, and some long-tail news, sports and lifestyle sites. It’s an interesting finding, but on its own it’s not very useful to us – again ‘quality’ is one of those concepts that everyone knows, but nobody can agree on how to describe. So we explored further. Based on this quality score, we took the 5 best sites – highest quality score – and the 4 bottom sites – lowest quality – and we compared them on a range of other metrics.
#20 First, we compared these high and low quality sites on readability. Across the 5 high quality sites, 33% of people showed said they’d be likely to read them as a source of news, sports or lifestyle. Across the 4 lowest quality sites, that figure was 9%. That’s a big difference – nearly 400% - so ‘quality’ has a big impact on how likely people are to read these sites for their news, sports and lifestyle needs. Big conclusion, but doesn’t necessarily tell us about *why* or what makes those sites more useful or desirable to use for those topics.
#21 Next, we asked our respondents to describe each of these sites , using a range of descriptions and attributes. After analysing the data, 14 of these descriptions were most closely tied to how readable people thought each site was. Colour-coded here along themes. Purple: related to layout and look. Organised, visually appealing, easy to read Orange: relevance – for someone like me, something I’m interested in. Blue: “trustworthy, believable” – very important elements of a news site, sports and so on. And in green, other attributes of the content: informative, well-written, entertaining and so on. These 14 are most closely correlated to how likely people are to want to read the sites.
#22 …and so, when we compare the high quality sites and the low quality ones, we’d expect to see some big differences in how people perceive them on these factors. And that’s exactly the case. The high quality sites were regarded as significantly more informative, easier to read, more entertaining and inspiring, and more worth sharing than the low quality sites. Big differences here – the high quality sites were coming back with about 2x as many people saying that they were informative, insightful etc
#23 Looking at the remaining 6 attributes, the gap’s even bigger – 3-4x as many people said that they thought the high quality sites were believable, visually appealing, well-written, relevant, and so on. It’s a huge difference, and really gives us an indication of what ‘quality’ means for consumers. And it really helps us understand what’s motivating consumers when they look for sites on which to find lifestyle content, or sports updates, or news headlines and analysis. It’s these points about how it’s laid out, whether it’s well-written, whether it’s informative, and believable.
#24 The thing is, quality’s an important concept for brands as well. And it’s incredibly important in marketing. To put it another way, if you buy lemonade from a little roadside stall selling it for 10c, you have very different expectations of that lemonade compared to a carton you’ve spent $4 buying in Pusateri’s or WholeFoods. Similarly with coffee: really, coffee’s black liquid with milk in it – until you drink it, you have no idea whether it’s good or bad. But if you go to a café and they give you your coffee in new china cup, with a little biscotti on the side, you’re going to have a different idea of how good it is than if they gave it to you in a cheap styrofoam cup. (And offline, we get that as marketers – my classic example is comparing the Financial Times, or the Wall Street Journal to Now. One has ads for $40k watches in it; the other has ads for massages and escorts – and brands pick and choose where they want their ads to be, because they understand the impact that the environment has on what people will think of their ads. )
#25 Wanted to see whether there were any differences in what respondents thought of ads, based on the sites on which they saw them. Gathered 9 different ads for 9 different brands (1 ad per brand) – all 300x250, rich media, from Canadian campaigns that ran recently. You can see some of them here. And when we showed our respondents the different webpages, each page had one of those ads on it. (Rotated the different combinations of ad and page, to remove any bias; and aggregated all the results across all the ads, and examined the data to see what themes came out of it.)
#26 1) when the ads appeared on the high quality sites, about half of people could remember seeing an ad, and 10% could correctly remember the brand it was for. When the SAME ADS appeared on the low-quality pages, figures were significantly lower. Only 30% of those people who saw the low-quality pages could remember seeing an ad, and only 5% could correctly remember the brand it was for. In part, may be down to layout – we know that many sites try to focus more on their layouts to keep them uncluttered, they run fewer ads and so on; Still a big difference – recall figure was halved, simply by putting those same ads on the low quality pages.
#27 Moving on from awareness s, we also wanted to understand whether people *felt differently* about the ads if they appeared on different sites. Answer is that they did. When the ads were shown on the high quality sites, people thought they (the ads) were more appealing, more entertaining, more trustworthy and better quality. Really interesting to see – the ads take on some of the attributes of the site they’re on, in people’s minds. Oprah: honest, open, speaking to me personally etc.
#28 Breaking it down, though, wanted to see how brand impact was affected. Looking across all the ads, found that impact of the ads was higher when they were on the high quality sites – by about 50%. The increase in brand favourability, and in people wanting to find out more about the brand, was 50% higher when the ads were on the high quality sites. The numbers aren’t huge – effect after only one exposure – but they are notable, they’re consistent with what we’ve seen, and they’re important. Just as with the styrofoam cup, or the bone china with the biscotti, people’s views of a brand are coloured by the environment/ packaging around the ad; and marketers need to bear that in mind when planning campaigns.
#29 Internet is changing media consumption, consumers’ behaviour is changing too, but…constants in what drives consumers…news, sports, finance, lifestyle and the like. So what I want in news reporting is pretty much the same as what my dad wants from his news. Only difference is he still reads a newspaper, and I read mine online. We both want it to be informative, believable, well-written, well- laid out and so on. Same in sports, in finance, lifestyle: outlets that offer these attributes – whatever medium - are seen as being ‘quality’, and the best sources for this kind of content. What has changed is discovery: my dad finds all his news in the newspaper, but I can find and consume articles, videos and so on through Twitter at 2am, on my mobile while I’m on the bus, on my computer at work. Good content is good regardless of the channel or device it’s on, and consumers now have more ways of getting to it than they’ve ever had before. Marketers: findings also clear. Whether it’s the cup that coffee’s served in, the magazine a brand appears in, or the content an ad runs alongside, environment has always been crucial to brands. And as we’ve seen this morning, you can take an ad and place it in different environments, different websites, and perceptions of the ad – and the brand it’s advertising – will change. Saw when ads are placed on quality sites alongside content that’s seen as more readable, better laid out, better written etc – the ads are more likely to be remembered; people feel better about them (visually appealing, trustworthy, entertaining and so on). Ultimately, the ads are more likely to affect consumer behaviour when they’re seen alongside that engaging content.

Yahoo Content Connections: What Premium Content Looks Like and Why It Matters

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