PowerPoint Presentation

REUTERS INSTITUTEFOR THE STUDY OF JOURNALISMTRENDS IN MOBILE NEWS CONSUMPTION

News Rewired 20th July@nicnewmandigitalnewsreport.org

Im Nic Newman from the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism at Oxford University we look at media systems across the world with a particular focus on Europe. We publish range of research about news consumption, how technology is impacting journalism and what publishers are doing about it.Today Ive going to talk specifically about mobile and Ill draw (mainly) on data from our annual digital news report (came out about a month ago) based on survey of 50,000 in 26 countries , also refer to report on online video including mobile video and trends and predictions report at the beginning of the year (all these and more available from publications section of our website)

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Recent publications15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 20162

June 2016

June 2016

Jan 2016digitalnewsreport.org/publications

Today Ive going to talk specifically about mobile and Ill draw (mainly) on data from our annual digital news report (came out about a month ago) based on survey of 50,000 in 26 countries , also refer to report on online video including mobile video and trends and predictions report at the beginning of the year (all these and more available from publications section of our website)

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Todays agendaKey facts on mobile news : Who, when, where and whyHow is mobile affecting publishers?Mobile and social perfect marriage?What formats work on mobile?What next?Q&A

15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 20163

And in terms of todays agendaIll run through some of the key data points on mobile news, who is consuming it, where and when are they consuming it, how fast it is growing Secondly talk a little about how this is affecting publishers again a lot of that is when and how people accessing differentlyThirdly Ill address the relationship between Mobile and social which is critical and will become more so in the futureIll talk about formats including video but also extend to which long form text work on mobile or dontAnd then Ill have a stab about how mobile might develop over the next year or two Q&A

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KEY FACTS ON MOBILE15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 20164

So this is the general picture over the last four years in some of the biggest countries we look at. Around 50% now on average using the smartphone for news. But some countries Korea, Sweden Switzerland are now mobile majority with more access via a smartphone than a computer/laptop combined way ahead of the US or the UK

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Growth of smartphone news useSELECTED COUNTRIES

Year-on-year smartphone for news growth shows no signs of slowing down. Smartphone news access higher than computer access in Switzerland, Sweden, and Korea.

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So this is the general picture over the last four years in some of the biggest countries around 50% now on average using the smartphone for news. But some countries Korea, Sweden Switzerland are now mobile majority with more access via a smartphone than a computer/laptop combined way ahead of the US or the UK

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Mobile tipping point 15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 20166

Just drilling down in a bit more detail at the UK we can see how things have changed can see news access from computer down, smartphone up, and tablet also down (not necessarily where we thought wed be a few years ago when tablet billed as saviour of the news industry) many people finding that they dont need tablet and bigger screened smartphonesAnd when we ask people about MAIN usage, the device they rely on most we can see that the smartphone and tablet together have overtaken the computer. We have passed the tipping point in the last year.

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Increased centralityRISJ Digital News Report 2015732% say smartphone main way of accessing online news

53% amongst under 35s

68% of those accessing news on public transport51% distracted when watching TV news

Overall we have seen the smartphone becoming much more central over the last few years, the defining device of the digital age because of it is always with you and is personally addressable.A third of us in total and over 50% of udner35s say it is the main way in which they get news In terms of news on the move 68% use the smartphone at least once a week, far more now than a than printed newspaper, and then even at home when watching the TV news over half of us say they are regularly distracted by a mobile device principally surfing the web, answering emails or using social networks

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MAIN DIGITAL NEWS DEVICE BY AGE (UK)

Younger users prefer smartphone news access, older users prefer either tablets or the computer.

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Here is the demographic breakdown in a bit more digital and it is quite interesting see smartphone use for news driven by under 45s whereas tablet usage is largely computer replacement for over 45s

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RISJ Digital News Report 20169

24%16%UNITED KINGDOM

12%17%UNITED STATES

First contact with news (in the morning)

This year for the first time we also put the smartphone on context with other platforms such as radio, TV, print as well as other internet devices. We asked people this year about what they do first thing in the morning, where they get their first news. Just comparing radio people do a lot in the UK 24% with smartphone 16% get their first news this way. In the US the smartphone is already well ahead 17% compared with just 12% for the radio.

But then where do people get their first news when they are on their smartphone? Going to apps websites, aggregators, email?What we see here in the US = 48% by far biggest chunk goes to Facebook and Twitter, 15% going to aggregators and just 23% to website or app

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RISJ Digital News Report 201610

24%16%UNITED KINGDOM

12%17%UNITED STATES

First contact with news (in the morning)

And in the UK, slightly different picture websites are much stronger, a lot of that is down to the BBC but still here one third get first news from Facebook or twitter by scrolling the feeds and that rises to almost 50% for young people.

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Mobile and social work together15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201611

So what this speaks to is that fact that how people access news is different on a mobile deviceThis chart looks at the relative importance of branded entry/direct entry and social media across computer, tablet and computer and can see that when using a smartphone they are less likely to go directly and more likely to use social media. So distributed content and the move to smartphone go hand in hand

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Facebook dominates15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201612

Use for news44%

In terms of which social networks, people use. As weve seen already Facebook is most important across all devices with 44% now saying they use the network for news, 10% for Twitter. The majority of Facebook usage is now mobile like access to news sites but we are also seeing the emergence of chat apps that are purely mobile such as whatsapp, Snapchat though these are generally not used very much for newsSnapchat discover we asked about specifically this year and surpised to find only 1% in the UK, though 40% using it for news.

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USA

APPLE NEWS: 4%FLIPBOARD: 4%SMART NEWS: 1%AUSTRALIA

APPLE NEWS: 4%FLIPBOARD: 4%SMART NEWS: 2%

Mobile news aggregatorsSelected countries

New mobile aggregators like AppleNews, Smartnews and Flipboard are far behind Facebook in terms of reach and importance.

Weve also seen growth of a number of other distributed news platforms specifically for mobile such as Apple News, Smart News and Flipboard, Nuzzell which has been going for a while and are used by professionals. But again we were surprised to find that they are not very heavily used. In general population only around 3%, a long way behind Facebook and other social networks.

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PUBLISHERS AND MOBILE15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201614

So that is consumer view, moving on to a publisher view of all this How has this changed what they do and what they see in their data. Majority of publishers also now report the majority of visits are coming from mobile and for many majority of time spent too

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Brexit vote (BBC traffic)

Source: BBC

Thursday 23rd Friday 24thBetween 6am and 7am on Friday, 80% of global visitors to BBC News Online were on mobiles and tablets.

One recent topical example from the BBC log files after the Brexit vote gives a really interesting insight into what is happening. So the biggest traffic day, the busiest period ever happened 6-7 see that 80% using smartphones to access the news, waking up and accessing from phones, also see no point at which computers account for more than 50% - very different from a few years ago.

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New internet peaks at the FTNew digital prime time

Most journalists file stories

New productsSource: FT audience research

This is a chart taken from the log files of the Financial Times not around Brexit but shows how there has emerged in the last few years a new prime time for digital (etc)

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15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201617

Guardian usage across the day - by platform

And here is a chart from the Guardian (from 2014) looks at traffic by platform. Two things interesting from this one shows how desktop was complementary to newspaper readership. Only when smartphone came along that digital really replaced the printed newspaper because it started competing in terms of that morning reading time

And then secondly that late peak for the tablet, reminds us that tablet is used primarily in the home as an easier way to get online.

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APPS OR MOBILE WEB?15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201618

Apps or mobile web? Weve done quite a bit of work on this over the years and the answer is not obvious. The first thing to say is that it is much harder on a mobile device to grab attention because of all the other things you can do:18

People use fewer sources on smartphone70% have a news app installed on their phone, only a third actually use them in a given weekRISJ Digital News Report 201519

1.52Average sources per person on smartphone significantly fewer than on a tablet or computer. Strong brands that provide breaking news or other strong utility do well but have to earn place in attention economy

What we find is that 70% of people have installed a news app weekly but only around a third use an app each week so the real problem is getting people to open it or go directly to a new brand as we saw earlierThe other aspect of this is that people tend to only use 1 or 2 brands on a smartphone (av 1.52) each week while they use much more than that on a computer or tablet. I suspect this is because when you are short of time and on the move, you tend to come back o the site you know and trust if you are going to go directly to a mobile news site.

And in the UK we find that the BBC seems to be the anchor brad with around 50% saying they used it regularly. Fox in the US, Abc in Australis and Spiegel some of the brands doing well elsewhere

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Proportion using a news app on smartphone or tabletSELECTED COUNTRIES

Use of news apps has grown in many countries since 2014.Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online (via any device) in the last week , which of the following ways of consuming news did you use? Showing code for any app use

Generally app usage has grown as mobile usage has grown but still only around 30% use an app in an average week, majority of traffic and usage tends to be for mobile web. The other thing we know about people who use apps is that these are your loyal users, much more interested in news, much more likely to go to a destination, older, more male.The key point here is not either or, apps critical in my view as somewhere to create habit but mobile web, distributed media is where you are going to acquire new users.

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Mobile news alerts have seen the biggest growth in Austria where they have doubled in use. Increases also in Ireland, Japan, Denmark, Turkey and BrazilProportion who arrived at news via a mobile alert SELECTED COUNTRIES

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The other reason why apps are becoming more critical is the growing importance of notifications which is easier and more effective in app driven world (going back to my earlier point this will enable you to alerts loyal users to stories that you know they might be interested inThis chart just shows how much more important this area is becoming, has become over the last few years.The problem of course is getting you to install the app in the first place

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ALL COUNTRIES

Less than 1% in both the US and Europe use smartwatches for news. Of those that do use news, push alerts seem to be more popular than going directly to an app.News use via Smartwatches

And just a word about wearables and watches currently only around 1% or less are using a digital watch so the market is pretty small, obviously not a great reading experience but in terms of news usage the main value that owners say they get is in the alerting functionality so news alerts first and then sports alerts and weather. Very few people are using apps.

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WHAT CONTENT WORKS ON SMARTPHONES?15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201623

Ok another key question is what content works on smartphones been a feeling that people dont read articles or long articles on smartphones and that may have been true in the past but over last tend years mobile screen sizes have doubled with much of that growth coming in the last two years with the growth of phablets and larger iPhones. So I think it is pretty clear that this makes a difference and that people do read longer articles now on smartphones

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15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201624

Short form dominates, but long form works

Source: Pew Research/Parse.ly

This is the best recent research on the subject from PEW suign data from over thirty news sites in the Parsely network, just in the US, but it shows that the majority of content accessed is short form (defined as under 1000 words), rather than long form but that the numbers of people who access long form on a smarthphone is the same, article for article people not less likely to access a long form article.

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15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201625

Screen size has doubled in last five years

Average is now over 5.0

Bigger devices lead to more browsing

45% of iBooks are now read on phones

How much difference does screen size make?

Another piece of research I think is really interesting from the Erikson mobility report looks at time spent per content format and per screen size and shows that form most content types a big screen size means biggest usage.If take video see how much screen size matters and how usage grows when get to phablets and tablets, but for general browsing which is the next one you can see that the new 5 and 6 and really the perfect size, as screen size gets bigger usage drops as it gets less accessible and those effects specially true for communication and social networking where portability becomes more important

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MOBILE VIDEO15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201626

In terms of mobile video, weve obviously seen a huge explosion in video and offsite video in particular over the last year with autoplay but also just the amount of news video that appears within the experience of both Facebook and twitter.

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Power of distributed video

VerticalSquareAutomatically playingImmersive (360)

2015 saw the video enabled Internet rivalling television news as the most compelling and authentic destination for live news.

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Much of this is designed for consumption on mobile and indeed shot of mobile phones. if you take the Paris attacks last November see examplesDon t think it is too much of exaggeration to say that the video and mobile enabled internet started to rival twenty four news as destination for live news.

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29% of video viewing time is vertical

More vertical and square video is on the way

Video is changing, vertical, square, round and interactive

As I mentioned this is changing the aspect ratio - Mary meeker did an analysis which showed that of all video watched TV and mobile 29% is now watched in a vertical aspect ratio (on mobile) and that is up form 5% just a few years ago so not too fanciful to suggest that

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Texted vs non texted in top Facebook native videosSource: Analysis of top videos provided by NewsWhip, February 2016, n = 303

Our research of the top 300 social news videos in Feb 2016 shows that the majority of video is now texted to make them work for smartphones when dont have sound on and for a social format.

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Emotional vs factual in top Facebook native videosSource: Analysis of top videos provided by NewsWhip, February 2016, n = 303

We also find that the majority of video is now consumed offsite through social media and that this is even more true for those using mobile phones (because of the amount of social media that is used) - and in terms of the content it tends to be short form and it tends to be emotional rather than factual. This is more nature of social media rather than mobile

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WHATS NEXT?15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201631

So these are some of the formats and approaches that are working so far about what about the future. I think there are four things that I would highlight.

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1. Notifications as new battleground

We used to be standing on a hill and shouting messages at people, [but now] theres a growing number of users who only engage with us when we send a pushAndrew Phelps, Product Director of Messaging and Push, NYT

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TREND 1 >>>>> As the fight for attention on a smartphone become more and more intense we are seeing the growing importance of notifications - the art of pushing the right content to the right person at the right timeand thats partly driven by new functionality greater payloads from Apple for example but were also seeing big beast like Facebook trying to seize the opportunity Notify which has launched in the US is new form of aggregation trying to filter and control access to notifications. Publishers on the other hand are trying to build their own strategies in this area. Like NYT moved beyond news with this Harper Lee as a way of drawing people back to distinctive content and have a whole team now focussing on this area how to get the balance right, how to use data to work out what to send and when

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2. Faster mobile pagesGoogles AMP moves to next stage

Proprietary approaches like Instant Articles

Publishers add lazy load and reduce advertising

Ad blocking software like UC browser

All this puts huge extra pressure on publishers and will push further to distributed models

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TREND 2 >>>> Secondly recognition that the mobile web hasnt worked very well and so were seeing huge effort on all sides to speed things up. Initiatives like Google AMP frameworks being adopted that load instantly is part of the battle to keep mobile web free against more proprietary efforts by Facebook, Snapchat and others and then publishers belatedly realising they need to do more and then finally new browsers that include ad blocking already become bery popular in India and other parts of Asia that block ads by default to give people a faster and better mobile experienceGood from consumer point of view, bad from publisher point of view as it makes it even harder to make money.

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Mobile was winning

Its perfect for the train, elevator, grocery store line, or wherever you have a spare moment to catch up on the newsIts an ongoing conversation about the news, sort of like texting

3. Bots and conversations

TREND 3 >>>> A third trend is the growth of messaging as content (as with the quartz app) So Instead of trying to impose our linear articles and videos on mobile users, how can our content fit into their patterns of behaviour, into their conversations.

Again that requires some different skills and some different thinking but will be a key part of the future. (as you can see perfect for public transport, grocery store queue)I love the way this graphic shows the place theyve come from and the place they might go to next on the phone. (if youve seen the New York Times chat bot for the elections this is the same idea)

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Mobile was winning

4. VR and AR

TREND 4 >>>> So mobile moments and quick interactions will be important but so too will be more immersive media. This links with the growth of VR and AR. News providers have been experimenting with this over the last year NYT sent Google cardboard holders to 1m loyal subscribers so they could view new VR content through their android smartphones which just slot in and looking to experiment around the US election and the Olympics in RIO .Facebook and YouTube already support 360 enabled video out of the box and that in turn will drive more 360 content from entertainment and from news.

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5. Rise of Virtual AssistantsGoogle, Microsoft, Cortana, Alexa and now Facebook M

ZERO UI

Over time over time more of us will talk to applications rather than touch them

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And then finally were going to be hearing a lot about personal assistants. So far only about a fifth of us use then but they are getting better all the time and the tech platforms are starting to use them. Google, Microsoft Cortana, Siri , Amazon with Alexa and now Facebook with M messengerThe big implication of this is moving from multiple screen to zero screens were going to be spending more time talking to applications rather than touching or clicking so Zero UI is going to be a thing and that may benefit audio and other formats that we havent even thought of yet.

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RECAP15/06/2016RISJ Digital News Report 201637

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Recap and discussion pointsSmartphone is becoming the defining device of the digital ageFormats and interactions will be different in a mobile environmentSocial media and mobile go hand in handIt is even harder to get attention on mobile for news (and harder to make money)

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So just to recap on the main issues and trends relating to newsSmartphone is becoming the defining device of the digital age because it is so flexible and it is always with youFormats and interactions will be different in a mobile environment, visual journalism, scrolls, swipes ultimately zero UISocial media and mobile go hand in hand working out how to use distributed platforms to reach new people as well as get existing customers to come back more oftenIt is even harder to get attention on mobile for news (and harder to make money) but it is competing for your time with entertainment and Pokemon Go and all the rest of it so the real issue is how can attract attention in the first place and create habit on mobile phones which is where apps and destination websites come in Happy to take questions on any of the above.

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More informationwww.digitalnewsreport.org#DNP2016reuters.institute@politics.ox.ac.uk

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