The current health crisis has put us all in a unique position and has affected all our analytical activities. Several of our clients have been kind enough to share their experiences by looking at the impact of the pandemic, their strategies for dealing with it and the outlook for when the crisis is over. In this article, Pierre Buffet, head of digital research at the French daily newspaper Le Monde gives a detailed rundown of the challenges facing the media sector.
Covid impact n°1: a spectacular increase in traffic
At Le Monde, news is the raw material, and when it is in abundance, the figures take off. This has been the case during the pandemic with a phenomenal increase in the volume of visits and the number of articles consulted per visitor.
Over a period of one month and one week, Le Monde’s traffic jumped by 81%. Daily traffic almost doubled, and on some days, it was four times higher. Pierre Buffet stresses that these traffic spikes are exceptional compared to previous records (which here seem almost insignificant):
This crisis is also causing a strong and sustained increase in conversions. Subscriptions have increased threefold on average during the lockdown and they are still high (x2) more than a month and a half after the beginning of the crisis.
Covid impact n°2: mobile usage continues to be the norm
With the spread of home-working, you might have thought that desktop use would have increased, but the opposite has happened. Le Monde’s mobile site has remained the most used feature, even increasing its share of use during the lockdown.
Covid impact n°3: the frequentation behaviors have changed
The lockdown has changed the visiting frequency of the lemonde.fr website readers. In particular, there has been a shift in the peak time of visits around 9am, when it is usually earlier (around 8am) on weekdays. This can be explained by the complete disruption of people’s transport patterns. At weekends, the peaks in reader attention have been reversed, with an increase in attendance on Saturday evening (rather than the usual morning) and Sunday morning (rather than the usual evening).
Overall, Le Monde has seen a significant increase in the frequency of visits.
Pierre Buffet also points out that new subscribers are just as engaged as old ones, but they have noticeably different (and sometimes hectic) behaviour:
- More clicks on all the recirculating elements of
the page (related articles, headers, continuous news banner…) - More article shares
- Fewer comments
The strategic changes made by Le Monde
The marketing message and actions have been adapted to the COVID crisis. The editorial staff is more disciplined and restrained than ever before. This can be seen in:
- The willingness to avoid making inappropriate
sales communication - The postponement of the launch of new
subscription offers - The end of classic acquisition campaigns (except
for some public interest content) - No official communication on figures
In terms of web analysis, the strategy has been to adopt a specific editorial structure which consists of offering 2 parallel live news feeds from 5am to 10pm:
- One on the development of the pandemic, to
answer readers’ questions. - The other to inform and advise readers on daily
life during the lockdown
Every morning, the teams from Le Monde carry out an evaluation of the previous day, based on analytical data and recommendations for the current day. The effects are measured and reported quickly, and optimisations are almost instantaneous. Pierre Buffet explains that in this context, the added value of analytics becomes obvious.
The post-crisis outlook
The question now for Le Monde is how to manage the return to news coverage in a ‘normal’ context (beyond the COVID-19 crisis). Pierre Buffet suggests several approaches:
- Gradually shift the balance of editorial
production, as 70% to 80% of content is currently devoted to COVID-19 - Monitor reader saturation and the fallout from
the crisis, particularly by tracking search volumes and performance of live
events - Monitor the return of non-Coronavirus themes to
the Top articles, even if this is still quite rare - Adapt to new trends. Health and Economy will be
at the forefront of the post-crisis topics
In a post-crisis context, knowing that the advertising sector will be affected economically, the challenge will be to retain new subscribers and avoid significant churn. Pierre Buffet stresses the need to prove the value of the daily newspaper in the post-crisis period. Monitoring the commitment of “lockdown subscribers” will also be key, by watching for possible dropouts. This will also involve setting up effective re-engagement scenarios for the different categories of churners to expose them to the best content, via all available channels (targeted push-ups, emailings, etc.).
In a future article, we will look at the effects of COVID-19 in the insurance sector with a contribution from the head of analytics at MGEN.
