Asia pacific journal of information systems

The Korea Society of Management Information Systems (한국경영정보학회)
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How Content Affects Clicks: A Dynamic Model of Online Content Consumption

  • Received : 2021.08.10
  • Accepted : 2021.11.29
  • Published : 2021.12.31
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Abstract

With many consumers being exposed to news via social media platforms, news organizations are challenged to attract visitors and generate revenue during visits to their websites. They therefore need detailed information on how to write articles and headlines to increase visitors' engagement with the content to drive advertising revenues. For those news organizations whose business model depends mainly on advertisements, rather than subscriptions, it is particularly crucial to understand what makes the website attractive to their visitors, what drives users to stay on the website, and what factors affect a user's exit decision. The current research examines individual news consumers' choices to find patterns of increase or decrease in user engagement relative to a variety of topics, as well as to the mood or tone of the content. Using clickstream data from a major news organization, the authors develop a user-level dynamic model of clickstream behavior that takes into account the content of both headlines and stories that visitors read. The authors find that readers appear to exhibit state dependence in the tone of the articles that they read. They also show how the topics expressed in headlines can affect the amount of content readers consume when visiting the news organization to a much larger degree than the topics expressed in the content of the article. Online publishers can make use of such findings to present visitors with content that is likely to maintain and/or increase their engagement and consequently drive advertising revenue.

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