As readers' behaviors change, publishers need to rewrite their audience acquisition playbooks

News publishers are having to adapt to dramatic changes in audience acquisition as Facebook finalizes its divorce with news, Google rolls out its AI-driven Search Generative Experience and young consumers exhibit very different information-seeking behaviors than in the past.

Social media have been on the decline for some time now, but the potential impact of AI-driven search tools, however, is only now beginning to come into focus. Adweek has examined the potential impact on traffic and revenue as Google’s Search Generative Experience is developed. The headline numbers are scary, with predictions of declines in organic search traffic ranging from 20% to 60% with a potential ad revenue loss as high as $2 billion annually across the publishing industry.

Apart from changes in search and social platforms, young people are exhibiting very different ways of finding information than the internet audiences of the past. Jason Hartley, head of search & shopping and privacy lead at agency PMG, believes that TikTok is “ingrained” in the behavior of younger readers and his agency has observed the siphoning off of Gen Z from Google. According to the latest data, “about 73% of Gen Z prefers to start on TikTok than Google.” TikTok users are using the app for music, cooking recipes as well as DIY and fashion tips, according to eMarketer.

Publishers will need to rewrite their audience acquisition playbooks to find new ways to connect with search and social audiences and entice them to their own channels, as well as to continue their investment in products that develop and deepen relationships with their audiences.

If you’d like to discuss options for an app to take advantage of these trends, we’ll be at the Mega-Conference Town Square.

Developing mobile products for mobile-only audiences

TikTok is only part of the story about the habits of young audiences. They are not just mobile-first, they are mobile-only, according to the Next Gen News report from FT Strategies and Northwestern University’s Knight Lab. The audiences of 2030, as the report refers to them, live in streams of information from their friends, creators and traditional news brands.

Researchers interviewed 45 news consumers in India, Nigeria and the United States and raised the alarm about the “existing and growing gap between the news experience the next generation wants and what they’re currently being provided.”

News organizations face this challenge: balancing the needs of their subscribers, who are often older, while also building products for and relationships with younger audiences.

Apart from future-proofing their businesses, news organizations have another motivation, the researchers said: Young audiences are trendsetters and older generations often adopt their behaviors later. This is true for technology but also for news, the report says. “In 2012, younger consumers were disproportionately accessing news online using smartphones and social media,” the report says. What young audiences do now, most audiences will do in the future.

It is important to say that young audiences still care about news, but the news they consume looks different and is consumed differently than in the past.

The next generation of news consumers are mobile natives, who “can’t remember life before the smartphone.” They carefully curate the apps that populate their home screens and context switch between tasks on their devices.

They live in a constant stream of information and interaction, switching between social media feeds, notifications, chats with friends, and aggregators. While news organizations fret over how AI-powered search might disrupt traffic to their sites, young news consumers more often search the social platforms important to them such as Reddit, TikTok and Instagram rather than use search engines.

They prefer “information-dense” short formats. It’s not just about short-form videos on social platforms, although that is a common way they consume information. They also looked to news aggregators, platforms such as Apple News or Opera Mini and country-specific apps such as Inshorts and Dailyhunt in India.

They filter their news and information through friends, influencers and creators, and it is “(t)hese sources — not established corporate brands” that drive discovery.

The researchers also found that for some young audiences push notifications were all they needed from an app. They could get the notifications without paying a subscription for the app.

Develop social media-friendly content to build direct relationships

As the Reuters Institute 2023 Digital News Report found, across markets 43% of 18- to 24-year-olds said that social media is their main news source, and this has meant a decline in direct traffic to news websites and apps. As we have covered many times, social media platforms are now far less likely to drive traffic to news sites.

News publishers have several ways to entice young social media audiences to develop a direct relationship with them to acquire first-party data and drive revenue.

• Events — After the pandemic, people are hungry for in-person events. We’re not talking about conferences but experiences. The Nudge, an entertainment publisher in London, uses social channels and its newsletter to promote “exclusive events or discounts for restaurants.”
• Rewards — Publishers can acquire data from audiences in exchange for discounted subscriptions, a free trial or other incentives, such as food or retail vouchers.
• Lite apps — We see a major opportunity for publishers to create “lite” versions of their apps. These apps, such as FT Edit and The Economist’s Espresso, offer a curated selection of a publisher’s content. Of course, these lite apps work well for publishers with a sufficiently large audience and also offer their primary subscriptions at high price points.
• Advanced Features — Instead of a stripped-down app, you could offer tools or features in exchange for personal data. This could be the ability to follow topics and authors or other ways to personalize their experience. The FT Strategies-Knight Lab study highlighted 2019 research that found that 54% of people were willing to exchange personal information for personalized experiences, but that figure increased to 72% for Gen Z.

A few things to consider as you develop your app strategy for the future:

• If push notifications are a primary mode of consumption for some audiences, how does this affect your push strategy? How will this affect how you craft push notifications? Additional research is necessary to understand what draws young people into an app.
• Short, information-dense formats are important to young audiences. Schibsted and the BBC are already experimenting with using AI tools to adapt content and formats to meet the personalized needs of news consumers, the report said.
• Young audiences want convenience and relevance, features they have come to expect from social platforms and streaming media services like Netflix. News publishers must refine their recommendation systems and features for this mobile-only generation.
• Some users want customization, to have control over their streams of information. The report recommended developing features that allow users to create their own feeds.