Unveiled with iOS 9 in 2015, the “Apple News” news application is still not available outside of a few Anglo-Saxon countries… Elsewhere, you have to make do with the News widget, available on iPhone and iPad.
Although not configurable and very limited, it generates traffic which turns out to be particularly important for the French media who are lucky enough to appear there.
The newspaper Les Echos looked at its functioning and the appearance sometimesvital traffic brought to certain mediaFrench.
According to the survey, being present or not in the list of French media selected by this Apple News widget can make a very big difference in terms of traffic to news sites.
According to Jean-Paul Dietsch, director of the ACPM-OJD (aaudience certification association), this small module of the “Today” page of iOS is responsible for approximately25% of mobile trafficmajor news sites. It would thus provide as much traffic as the three other main sources, namely social networks, search engines and direct access to the site.
So obviously, all the media want to be there. Except that the operation remains particularly opaque. No real communication or official relationship is in place at Apple. Even if there is a contact at Apple France for the French media, this has very little power, because these are in fact articles to be highlighted.
We learn that the list of lucky people elected to this very exclusive club of the News widget has recently gone from20 to 24.
But it can happen that a media outlet is excluded for no apparent reason, leading to major repercussions for it. This is notably what happened to Marianne magazine in November 2017, which then observeda drop of 35%of its visits, leading to a drop in advertising revenue.
Guillaume Bournizien, the digital marketing manager of the newspaper “Le Parisien”, indicates that the audience coming from this widget is not very engaged (it is confined to the article presented), however it monetizes rather well.
Regarding the choice of articles highlighted on the News widget, the entire community is reduced to conjectures. It seems that the algorithm would favor content that iswidely shared and “liked” on social networks, especially via Twitter.
The fact remains that we can often observe very serious articles, mixed with other much lighter ones such as “people” news. When content has the chance to pass into the News module, the effect is particularly notable, with a traffic boost ranging fromup to 10xaccording to the newspaper Le Figaro.
According to Guillaume Bournizien, the algorithm evolves regularly; it now seems to take into account the sharing of articles by influential personalities on Twitter.
But only one thing is certain: how the News widget works remains a big mystery, which can have a significant positive impact for the media.
- To read the article in its entirety,it's here on the website of the newspaper Les echos
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By : Keleops AG
Deputy editor-in-chief, also known under the pseudonym Teza. Former video games journalist, who has been immersed in tech and Apple products since his very first iPhone 3GS in 2009. He has since worked for several American tech sites and now for iPhon.fr. Incidentally YouTuber and Apple product specialist on the MobileAddict channel. To contact me: maxime[a]iphon.fr
