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India’s ABP Digital focuses on engagement as it ramps up reader revenue journey
“Luckily that’s when the subscription bootcamp came in,” said Dipanjan Dutta, Head of Business Operations, ABP Digital, who credited this programme, organised by WAN-IFRA and supported by the Meta Journalism Project India, in helping them accelerate the pace of their plans.
For ABP Digital, “the idea was very clear,” Dutta said during a presentation at WAN-IFRA’s recent Digital Media India event. “How do we move from the volume metrics to the content quality metrics and embark upon a reader revenue journey?”
To do this, he said they realised they had to focus on engagement, and to improve it, they decided to concentrate on two key metrics: The amount of time readers spent on a page and the number of pages they looked at per session.
As part of their process, Dutta said ABP Digital undertook experiments to improve engagement at three levels by using:
Story-level experiments: such as modifying print headlines for online, and including sub-lines with all articles
Site-wide experiments: including the production of premium content and deepening their multi-media content, such as videos. Dutta added that, as was stressed in the bootcamp, premium content does not mean that a story is “exclusive,” but rather that it has a unique angle or distinct perspective for a publisher’s audience.
Cultural alignment: Getting everyone to focus on not only reach but also engagement.
Going forward, he said they are aiming to do a broader redesign of the article page to inclu…