Facing the dominance of platforms, many media outlets have lost control of their audiences. Newsrooms, product teams and editorial staff—what if we took back control?
When measuring and comparing the audience of French media in absolute figures, traffic, or subscribers, it's easy to collectively lose sight of a more important editorial and economic objective: building a loyal readership.
While it's possible to measure audience loyalty using retention metrics similar to subscription-based SaaS businesses, another indicator reveals an obstacle upstream of this objective: the source of visitor traffic.
Web traffic to news websites can be divided into three main categories of visits:
- Direct traffic : that of visitors who go directly to the media outlet, without going through an intermediary, and continue to navigate within its content. To simplify, we also include in this category visits generated by newsletters and email campaigns managed by the media outlets;
- Searched traffic : we're talking here almost exclusively about Google. Whether it's classic search results pages, or products like Google Discover or Google News ;
- Social media traffic : with a large part coming from Meta product traffic (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) followed most often by Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit.
Here's what we observe for about ten major French media outlets (SimilarWeb data), among which we find Le Figaro, Franceinfo, Le Monde, Mediapart, Ouest France, Actu and L'Équipe: for one in two media outlets, indirect and intermediated traffic exceeds 50%. And for one in three media outlets, this traffic reaches 70%.
Think about what this means: a third of major French media outlets don't control the origin of their audience, including recurring visitors. Instead, they're subject to the rules of a tiny trio of principal intermediaries: Google, Meta (with Facebook and Instagram), and Twitter.
Yet Mark Zuckerberg no longer likes news; Elon Musk keeps trying to buy Twitter and remains unpredictable when it comes to media; finally, Google continues to compartmentalize the content of these major media outlets even further in a new intermediary platform, Google News Showcase. So the situation is far from stable…
This hyper-dependence on intermediaries is concerning, not a matter of chance, but fortunately not inevitable. Can we discuss it without naïveté and with optimism?
Why worry about this relationship
The share of indirect traffic, sourced primarily from Google and Meta, is concerning because these giants are the ones setting and changing at will the rules for distributing and making media content visible.
And their interfaces not only pit mainstream media and fake news directly against each other, but are also designed to keep their users on the platform at all costs.
This indirect audience is not merely an absolute number of visits to celebrate, since it would always be greater than zero. It is also a sign of the time, irreducible, that readers spend on these platforms instead of on a media outlet of their choice.
Although ACPM rankings might visually lead us to believe so, media outlets very rarely compete with each other.
They are competing with the first commercial result on a Google search results page, with 45 minutes spent on Instagram or Twitter without realizing it, with 2 hours of binge-watching on Netflix, with a fake news story circulating in a WhatsApp group, or with direct communication from brands, individuals (politicians, celebrities, influencers) via their own social media accounts. This is precisely why this competition cannot be won by celebrating an absolute number of visits. It must be rethought strategically, through an editorial and product approach serving the readership.
Yet this precious time, spent adopting the rules, formats, and features of these platforms, is not used to build that privileged relationship with these readers. A double burden, in short.
Where does this love of indirect traffic come from?
One of the first reasons probably stems from the media's historical obsession with absolute audience figures
"France's most-listened-to radio station," "the most widely distributed newspaper," "the most-watched program." Most online media have not escaped this obsession built on the same advertising-based business model that exploits volume. And when only volume matters, it doesn't matter how many intermediaries deliver it. Although part of the industry has since turned to subscription, we still talk about the number of subscribers: as if their acquisition had to happen at any cost, regardless of the channel, without questioning the retention of this readership with the same clarity as any SaaS business.
The second reason for this hyper-reliance on indirect traffic is equally tragic and often unrecognized: the allure of novelty.
The vast majority of search engine traffic comes from Google's search results pages. It is therefore necessary and legitimate to understand their evolution: the News tab, the Top Stories carousel, or more recently new surfaces like Google Discover or Google News Showcase.
Online media nonetheless had to go much further in 2016, investing precious development resources in support of the AMP format. In 2016, this format was mandatory to hope to appear in the Top Stories carousel. Five years later, Google no longer has any interest in this format. News organizations, meanwhile, must now allocate resources again to maintain or remove it. Oops.
This distraction is even worse for traffic from social networks.
Each of them is first and foremost a technology company, with a constant desire to create content experiences that are increasingly native and increasingly proprietary.
Nothing comes closer to a media story than the next story from a friend, and nothing flows better than a tweet, after a tweet (preferably without reading the article).
Scrolling, sometimes even automatically, reigns supreme. It's the click or the swipe up to leave the app to pursue whatever captures their interest that requires effort—not the discovery of the next piece of content. Hence the importance for media outlets to think about how to capture readers' attention on social networks and to explain the promise behind their click or their swipe up. To not offer all their information on these networks. Beyond editorial questions, between new services to test (RIP Clubhouse) and new features of flagship platforms to adopt, the product manager role and its roadmap also amount to permanent reaction rather than strategic vision for readership. And platforms today are better equipped than media outlets with product managers, developers, designers, analysts, and marketers to create these experiences.
How to build reader loyalty
It is essential that editorial teams and product teams within media organizations regain control of their roadmap
They should focus on conversion and retention metrics. They should pursue every avenue to invent new sources of proprietary traffic—and there are many, as they already do quite well with their apps or newsletters. And finally, they should boldly resist the allure of novelty, of new platforms, of new features. Because every minute a product manager, journalist, designer, or developer spends taming the latest feature from Google, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook is a minute lost focusing on creating or improving a proprietary user experience based on the specific interests of their audience. Whether subscribed or not, it's this loyal readership that makes it possible to shift the proportion of the audience mix in favor of the media's proprietary channels.
And it is this new mix, this new balance of power, that frees up the media’s resources and capacity for action, allowing it to focus more on the experiences of these readers and less on the constant changes in external platforms.
Gradually break away from the tech giants and build direct relationships with your audience
How can we move toward a more loyal readership and reduce our dependence on external traffic from the web giants? Here are three strategies to implement starting tomorrow in your editorial departments as well as your product and marketing teams:1. Set a target as a percentage of the share of “owned” traffic on the web for your media outlet.(And not in absolute terms.) Based on the current percentage (30%, for example), you can set a goal of a 10% improvement over six months (i.e., 33%, still using the same example). To track this "proprietary" traffic, you can combine your direct traffic with traffic from channels under your control: newsletters, marketing campaigns, notifications, etc.2. Reevaluate your technology investments in projects related to major external platformsWhether it involves exploring new features, maintaining specific formats, or even participating in dedicated programs. Assess and quantify their actual impact in relation to your fixed-asset costs. Therefore, don’t hesitate to prioritize platforms whose user experience encourages readers to navigate to the original source of the content, even if these services are less well-known or “sexy” (hello, Reddit).3. Reinvest in your readershipWith exclusive features for subscribers (for example: articles to share), moderated comments, and interactions with journalists—features unavailable on your products but not on third-party platforms, etc. In 2023, focus on enhancing the experience for your most loyal readers. Prioritize these features in your roadmap and focus on enhancing your readers’ experience. They’ll repay you for it.
About the Author
Maxime Leroy is an entrepreneur and an expert in audience and community development. He is a consultant for Le Monde and a columnist for Médianes, having previously led numerous multidisciplinary teams for The New York Times, CNN, and Meetup.
Media, Audiences, and Communities: Read Maxime Leroy’s monthly column in the Médianes newsletter.
