Does publication time influence how many people read your content? On the web the answer, unsurprisingly, is yes. It is even extremely easy to measure the impact. But does release time affect the impact of ePapers?
ePaper is largely a 1:1 digital version of the traditional newspaper, but the digital aspect makes it possible to analyze reading habits and ad interests, in a way which is not possible in the paper version.
When the ePaper is released many apps automatically download it. If we look isolated on the download numbers, we don’t get the full picture. Many might think that the number of readers is well established. A look at opening data, in conjunction with publication time tells, however, a more nuanced and fascinating history. It turns out that the time of publication have more to say on the number of readers than many might think.
In 2015 two Norwegian newspapers changed the release time for their ePaper publications from morning to approximately 11 pm the night before. In the following period, the publications got both more downloads and more readers.
The graph above shows the difference between the number of downloads for morning and evening releases of the two Norwegian newspapers. The red graph shows there are more downloads after the release was moved to the evening. The figures are based on one month before and after the change.
We have found a few Scandinavian newspapers that matches almost exactly the average for the trend we are seeing.
Comparing the number of openings in relation to the number of downloads, there is a tendency for more openings for evening editions.
For newspapers that publish in the evening, before readers go to bed, we are now seeing two major download peaks. Not in itself surprising. Readers now download both morning and evening. But they tend to open it more times, when they've downloaded in the evening. This results in a longer overall reading time for evening publications, and thus more exposure to great journalistic content, as well as the ads financing the release.
Do you want to know more about what changing publication time can do for your release? Write your name and email address in the form below and we will contact you.
