Earlier this year, a number of prominent websites took to laying off many of their their writers, in an effort to switch to producing more video content.
The websites that went ahead and cut a decent amount of their writers, was sites like: Vocativ, Mic, Vice, MTV News, International Business Times, Fox Sports, ESPN, and others.
Why did they do this?
There is said to be a growing audience online when it comes to video and that has prompted these sites to shift their action plan.
It's been estimated that in the years to come, that Americans on average will spend about 81 mins every day watching video content, an increase from the average 61 mins that was seen just a couple of years ago. For reading, it's estimated that the time people spend consuming written content (like a newspaper) is going to decline to an average of 13 mins per day.
PEW Research also estimates that most Americans prefer to watch their news, roughly 46 percent, rather than listen to the content or read it.
However,...
it looks like their move to opt for video over written content might have not been the best decision nor in-line with the online audience demand. It looks like for those websites that made this move, that their audience is tanking big time and they are losing millions of views.
According to the former managing editor of the International Business Times, Mark Bonner, their site saw a direct negative effect on their overall audience after the switch. The average time that people spent on the page drastically changed and he says that he doesn't think only video content will be the future.
Fox Sports has seen a dramatic 88 percent loss in their traffic. Other publishers have also seen at least a 60 percent drop in their online traffic as a result of the change to video.
Take a look at these numbers according to data from comScore and others:
- Mic had 17.5 million visitors in August 2016 and that came down to roughly 6.6 million in August 2017
- Vocativ they had 4 million visitors in August 2016, which then came down to 175,000 in July 2017
- Fox Sports had roughly 26.4 million visitors in August 2016 and that came down to 9 million in August 2017.
Despite the dramatic decline though, it can't be said that the switch to video is entirely to blame for the struggles and not every site that made the switch is seeing similar difficulty now with views.
As well, it's been said that these sites were already dealing with struggles before they made the switch to cut writers. But it's clear that there has been some impact that might be linked to the move.
Also, these big sites use other platforms like Facebook to share their content and the distribution numbers might not be accurately reflected as per the views to their content on those platforms. Despite the views to their own site decreasing for example, the views and interaction with their content on Facebook might have remained steady regardless of their move to let go of many writers.
Should it be all or nothing with only one variety of content? It looks like for those sites that have the resources to be able to do both, grow their content teams in multiple ways with both writing and video content, are the ones who are proving successful with steady traffic.
Pics:
Pixabay
Pixabay
Alexa.com
Sources:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-29/publishers-are-making-more-video-whether-you-want-it-or-not
https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/pivot-to-video.php
http://www.thewrap.com/when-a-pivot-to-video-isnt-the-answer/
http://awfulannouncing.com/fox/fox-sports-among-several-notable-sites-lose-thousands-page-views-pivoting-video.html
https://digiday.com/media/side-effect-pivot-video-audience-shrinkage/