Why is Arkreach media list different from my usual list? | Media Planning module

Why is Arkreach media list different from my usual list?

Well, that’s a million-dollar question, since for a long long time media lists for specific media categories have looked the same (with minor changes here and there).

Not saying that our list is the best but it is definitely the only one rooted in news media data and online reader behavior. So, it’s definitely worth a try. Let’s deep dive and find out why.

The Usual Media List

As the name suggests this is the media list that you have been using currently. What do we know about these lists?

1. It is pretty much Influenced by word of mouth i.e. our industry peer discussions on what media outlets work better, where the reputation is great, and what is most loved.
2. If a competition gets featured in specific media publications then that definitely got to be on our list.
3. That’s great but we always need some data as well to layer this up, so here comes the domain traffic i.e. the overall traffic size on a news publication e.g. this would range from a few ‘000 to million user visits per day on the likes of NYtimes, Economic Times, or The Washington Post ). We used this to measure overall reach, the PR value, and the proverbial ROI.

What’s wrong with this approach?

Nothing! it makes sense (kind of) but here’s the catch. It lacks one big element and that is DATA.. not just any data but objectively defined DATA focused on actual engagements, not just social media interactions on published news media content.

I know what you are thinking – why not social media interactions?

Social media interactions are the byproduct of your content being published, as and when few (I mean very few) of the readers share it on social media or engage with the article links they find there.

So, what DATA is important for published content on online news media? Here are three good data points that your media list should come true on:

Three good reasons:

Number 1: Who did you reach out to? i.e. Audience persona
Number 2: In what measure were you able to reach out to them? i.e. Potential reach
Number 3: Did the visitors really engage with the article? i.e. Sustained audience size

(sustained audience size: (Definition) Visitors who take more than one action (e.g. click), and spend quality time consuming the content on the site.)

Now, let’s see how the Arkreach media list is different.

For starters keep in mind the three good data points we just mentioned.
Now, let’s see how Arkreach leverages these.

Audience Persona

Content Quality

Sustained Audience Size

These are interconnected aspects through which the Arkreach media list is crafted using its algorithm fuelled by AI models. We solve these by overcoming a series of challenges and here we go…

Challenge number 1: What do we know about the people we want to target?

Using the targeting criteria set we look at news media domains that host visitors with similar characteristics like location, age, gender, income, occupation, education, household size, etc. The focus is to collect information about persona-specific behavior and figure out where they go on the content publishing websites to consumer content.

That brings us to…

Challenge number 2: Where are the most number of people who meet this specific criterion for a particular media category going to read?

….and what do they do there? Well, we know that they consume specific content which can be always categorized among popular themes like health, tech, business etc. This is easy to predict in niche sites but for large news media domains, this becomes a challenge since media category content is contextual and hosted all across the portal.

This brings us to…

Challenge number 3: This is how to isolate this content-specific behavior and start to pick up reader engagement trends.

…and we solve this by focusing on Sustained Audience Size. Most news media websites have loads and loads of visitors but 65% to 85%++ do not stay on the site for long. Either people are either really choosy about what they want to read or they don’t like what they see when they land on the news media site. They were possibly misdirected to this web location through online ads, affiliate traffic, or clickbait.

Thus, we focus on quality visitors who take more actions on the news media site and spend some quality time, usually more than 5sec to 10 secs++ (Yep, that’s a lot in the lifetime of an online visitor :D)

This brings us to…

Challenge number 4: How do we make sense of all this ‘jargon’?

{ ARK score }

Ark Score is a universal metric used to grade media list-specific sites through precise parameters focused on online user behavior for a particular media list category rather than overall domain traffic size. It is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest value. The score considers various factors such as available content quality, sustained user traffic on specific content themes, and the targeted audience persona.

… and that’s the reason the Arkreach media list looks different than your usual list.

In summary,

Reasons to Believe	Usual  Media List	Arkreach Media list
Reason 1:	Based on overall domain traffic	Based on the most active ‘sustained audience size
Reason 2:	Doesn’t consider the Audience’s persona	Focuses on Audience persona
Reason 3:	The list is sorted into a niche or general categories	The list is sorted basis of content quality
Reason 4:	Doesn’t account for  dynamic online reader behavior	Focuses on dynamic reader behavior and news cycle. (Read: Ark score)
Reason 5:	Takes manual research, and can get quite subjective	DATA doesn’t lie.

While you craft your next media list, and if the numbers start to overwhelm you, remember…

When in doubt trust the Arkscore!

Quick links:

1. Website: {Arkreach }
2. Dashboard: {login to} start your free trial.
3. Blog post on Ark score {here}