Harry Beaven, account manager at Ozone and gaming tech lover, pops his games controller to one side to unearth insights from the way our readers engage with our technology and computing content.
In just over six months, the pandemic has changed the way we work, shop and play, thanks to a major, and speedy, digital technology shift (and a nice little resurgence for the humble QR code - who would have guessed that?).
We’re used to hearing about the impact of tech on younger generations or early adopters, yet the current situation has meant increased technology adoption across a wider demographic spread - perhaps beyond what we might ever have experienced without COVID-19. We’ve all seen the images of grandparents keeping in touch with their families via video calls, or perhaps had our own parents on the phone needing a bit of help to secure their online supermarket slot!
Across our portfolio, our websites take on various roles for their readers; be it informing, educating or entertaining. It’s no surprise that at a time when most of us were working from home and desperate to keep connected with those that we love, that people would turn to our titles to understand the best ways to do that.
Across April and May we saw a significant increase in readership of our technology-based content - rising upwards of 30% in the first month of lockdown. As restrictions began to lift throughout the summer we’ve seen these levels stabilise. However, we believe that as the weather starts to change and localised lockdowns and heavier restrictions become more commonplace, these figures will start to rise again.
In addition, Q4 brings the build up to Christmas and no doubt technology will be a big focus for festive spending - in fact, the Bank of England highlighted that during Christmas 2019 spending on computers increased by 75% versus a regular month. As one of the categories to experience the biggest surge in spend, and with one of the highest price points, we know consumers will want to make educated choices for their big purchases.
Computing content remains the key draw for our readers and accounts for the majority of page views across our network, with other consumer electronics also taking a consistent slice. Interestingly in September, the subcategory of Artificial Intelligence content saw a spike in page views as this article written by a robot took centre stage.
Through analysis of the sentiment of the content created across our network of publishers, we can see that over two-thirds of articles skew towards a positive or neutral stance. We believe that the content tending towards the negative is driven by working from home arrangements, and particularly in the case of laptop articles, presents advertisers with an opportunity to drive home the message of versatility of use and how best to set-up at home. Posture has become a key word during this pandemic!
Wearables content has the highest proportion of positivity, which given the impact these technologies are having on our readers’ lives, has no doubt led to our expert journalists giving glowing reviews and upbeat commentary of this area of tech. I’m sure we all know someone who invested in a Fitbit to track their daily steps during the lockdown period.
Tech lovers also have a high affinity with other content types across our portfolio, in particular indexing highly against Television, Automotive and Music & Audio content, offering advertisers further ways of reaching them. Also, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the subject, almost 60% of tech content is consumed on mobile.
So with technology and devices being front of mind - and front of face - during 2020, what are our key takeaways for making the most of the attention this ‘switched on’ audience pay to our content?
Firstly, remember that the reading peaks for tech content appeared at times when staying home was most prevalent - we believe this theme will re-emerge as the weather turns and being at home becomes more normal thanks to legally-enforced corona-restrictions.
Secondly, the sentiment of tech content is broadly positive, particularly for new products and consumer electronics. Brands can capitalise on this by advertising around key Christmas events such as Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday when consumers are actively seeking the best deals on the latest big-ticket products.
Finally, don’t forget that almost 60% of this content is consumed on mobile evenly throughout the day, so make sure you don’t omit mobile-specific formats from your media plan.
With near universal reach of all UK adults, our reader insights provide a content-driven barometer for real-life consumer behaviours. If you’d like to find out more, drop us a line here.
