Longer-Form Articles Work on Smartphones (Study)

Good news for publishers dabbling in Facebook Instant Articles: A new study from Pew Research Center found that long-form news articles are more effective among smartphone users.

Good news for publishers dabbling in Facebook Instant Articles: A new study from Pew Research Center found that long-form news articles are more effective among smartphone users.

The study was conducted by Pew in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, using audience behavior metrics from web analytics provider Parse.ly.

According to Pew, total engaged time (time spent scrolling, clicking or tapping) with news stories 1,000 words and longer averaged about twice that with stories of 101 to 999 words—123 seconds, compared with 57 seconds.

Pew added that while 76 percent of the articles it studied were of the shorter variety, long-form stories attracted visitors at nearly the same rate as short-form stories—1,530 complete interactions (URL to definition) versus 1,576.

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