How Publishers Are Losing Engagement

Brandwatch Bulletin #91: How Publishers Are Losing Engagement

The big players look to be struggling.

8 October 2021

Welcome to today’s bulletin where we’re taking a look at major publications from a range of industries to see how they’re faring.

Let’s get to it.

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The state of publisher engagement

Many publishers saw a boon in traffic when the pandemic began. Not only were people seeking out information on Covid-19, lockdown, and vaccines, they were also filling time by reading articles online.

With that in mind, we wanted to get an idea of how publishers were faring now across different industries. In this case we’re not basing our analysis on traffic, but on the average number of social engagements articles received. Social engagements refer to actions like Facebook likes and Reddit comments.

The idea here is to work out which industry publications are getting the best bang for their buck, based on the assumption that the more engagements an article gets, the more people see it. (Sharing gets more eyes on a piece, and social media platform algorithms draw heavily on engagement metrics).

To get this data we used BuzzSumo to analyze six industries, looking at eight major publications from each one. Those industries are:

Health and medical
Sports
Science
Technology
Business and finance
News

We collected data going back to January 2019, looking at how the average number of social engagements per article changed from that point on.

Let’s start with the most Covid-19-related topic: health and medical.

We found that generally the health and medical publishers saw lower levels of average engagement, and were far less likely to see articles go viral or be widely shared compared to other industries.

A single article doing well can massively boost the average engagement per piece. For example, there were jumps in engagement in May and June 2019. For May, this was caused by an article about the new trend of nose hair extensions and a listicle about low carb snacks. Whereas the June spike was caused by a single article about the links between exercise and depression.

The two massive spikes in 2020 are, as you’d expect, related to Covid. The one in February explains how handwashing can help slow the spread of the virus, while the one in May was a now-retracted study into hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid.

Since those spikes, average engagement per article has fallen and is now at its lowest level since January 2019. This may be explained by people wanting to avoid the topics of Covid-19 and health after having to focus on them so much, something we noted back in June.

Next we’re looking at sports and science publishers. They’ve both seen a similar trajectory in engagement since Covid-19 arrived.

Both industries looked to be seeing decent growth in engagement going into 2020, with science publications getting a big boost as interest in Covid-19 jumped. Sports publishers then saw the same in June, with this spike driven by content about cancelled competitions and the use of Confederate flags at NASCAR events.

After this, sports publications fared a bit better than science ones, but then 2021 saw both practically nosedive. This is especially surprising for the sports publications who had both the Euros and the Olympics to write about.

This isn’t a unique trend though.

Things weren’t looking great for tech and business publishers in 2019, with near straight decreases in engagement as the months went on. But when Covid-19 started getting attention, numbers quickly rebounded thanks to content on the topic.

This peak was short-lived and while there was another rebound in January 2021, they dropped again sharply. By September of this year, both sets of publishers are seeing their lowest levels of engagement since January 2019.

Maybe the more generalist news publishers are faring better?

We take that back.

News publishers saw a relatively stable 2019 before an incredible rise from February 2020 onwards. As you’d expect this was mostly driven by Covid-19 content as readers scrambled for any and all information they could get.

But once again we see a dire turnaround in 2021 with month-on-month decreases from February onwards.

What’s going on?

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason for these decreases, especially across all industries. But it’s worth noting that we only looked at big players – smaller publications not included in our study may not have seen the same trends.

It’s worth noting that only 24% of people trust the news they get from social media, while the rise of newsletters has given people alternatives to mainstream publications.That means while publishers enjoyed higher traffic during the pandemic, they may be now losing out to smaller competitors, or even individuals with hugely popular email newsletters.

Clearly it’s something Bloomberg is concerned about. They now allow you to follow individual journalists and get email alerts whenever they publish an article. Will other big names follow their lead?

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, but we’ll be back next Friday. Have a great weekend. And if you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,