Newsworks says a study into youth readership has proved that young people (15-29) are actively engaged with trusted news environments.
Nine in 10 young people consume news – while 72% engage with news brands on a regular basis – checking on average six news items a day.
The year-long research project, conducted by research agency Colourtext in collaboration with Newsworks, included analysis of six million clicks made by 1,000 nationally representative young people across every website and every app they used in one month.
The results revealed that the 1000 young people in our sample spent over seven million seconds – 117,007 minutes, 20,000 hours or 81 days – reading the news.
Importantly for advertisers, Newsworks says the clickstream analysis also captured every instance where reading the news was immediately followed up with related online retail activity, providing evidence of how news brands influence online buying decisions.
Seven in 10 young readers visited a retail site after reading news brand content and the influence of news content is considerable with 75% taking a ‘retail action’. These included finding out more about a new product or service, discovering a new product or service they haven’t heard about before and purchasing a product or service.
The data also identified five clear types of news reader (Meme Me!, Personal Puzzlers, Have You Got News for Me?, Who Scored?, Catch Me If You Can) highlighting the diversity of news interest among young readers today – including hard news, politics, entertainment and sport.
Heather Dansie, insights and research director at Newsworks, who led the study, said: “There’s a belief that young people today aren’t engaged with the news. Our data has proved otherwise. Not only are young people reading a huge amount of news they are also engaged with a broad breadth of news content from entertainment, right through to national and international issues.
“Young people do not consider themselves to be news avoiders, but rather consider themselves to be an engaged and knowledgeable generation who value the truth and want to understand what is going on in the world.”
The study also included an attitudinal survey and in-depth interviews with young people from across the country.
Three quarters of 15-29-year-olds said that journalism plays an important role in society today, and 85% value investigative journalism that holds power to account.
Seven in 10 are concerned about the rise of fake news – with only half of them confident that they can spot misinformation, while 80% trust the information they see from journalists. Also, young people trust news brand content 85% more than “other social media content for news”.
Jo Allan, Newsworks CEO, said: “Our landmark study found that news brand readership plays an extremely influential part in young people’s lives.
“In an era of fake news, young readers place huge respect, value and trust in journalism. News brand environments are highly valuable in the hearts of young people, and for an advertiser’s bottom line.”
Jason Brownlee, founder of Colourtext, added: “By analysing data that captures the authentic, unfiltered, moment-by-moment online behaviour of young people, we've arrived at findings that are both clear and compelling. From a methodological perspective, it's a genuine first in the marketplace, and it has been a real pleasure to work on such an exciting project."
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