Thursday 27th January: Single-brand apps winning for engagement

January 27, 2022

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

No surprises that Apple News and the BBC News app are coming out on top in the UK. What is a surprise, however, is that an app called 'NewsTag' is in third place. I've tried looking it up and their website doesn't work, and the app doesn't appear in the Play store. What's going on?

Mysterious aggregators aside, there are a couple of really interesting nuggets to come out of this for those interested in product/audience engagement. The first is the difference in time spent per person on apps that aggregate news (85 mins) compared to single-brand apps (166 minutes). This surprised me, but as PG's Aisha Majid points out, readers of single-brand apps are likely to be much more loyal to that particular title.

The other point of note - one that is perhaps unique to the UK news ecosystem - is the failure of news apps other than Apple News and the BBC to have any significant portion of audience reach. The majority of the top 30 apps reached less than 1% of the population.

The new native video embed will allow Substack creators to upload or record a video onto a post directly. Writers will be able to make videos available to everyone, or just to paid subscribers. I don't know how practical a distribution method this will be for non-exclusive videos, but this is potentially a very useful tool for offering exclusive extras to subscribers.

According to Press Gazette, Tortoise grew its paid membership to 55,000 since launching fully in 2019; marking a 5,000 increase in paid membership since October. Its newest funding round will go towards helping the publisher grow paid individual and professional membership, including a renewed focus on events, and a further push into audio journalism.

If you're working in a local or regional newsroom in the UK and have an idea for a new tool or strategy in your newsroom, this is for you. Journalism.co.uk have launched a pilot programme to help smaller news publishers experiment and innovate in areas like audience engagement, membership, AI and audio. You have until 14th February to apply!

This week's podcast:

This week’s guest is Rob John, MD of the Content Marketing Association. He discusses what the CMA does and who its members are, how content marketing might fit within a publisher’s revenue mix, and the panel they’re running at The Publishing Show in London in March.

Become a supporter of the Media Voices team today! ❤️ Just head over to our KO-FI page and make a one-off contribution or sign up to support us every month. Every contribution help us to keep doing what we do and plan for more in the future.