Mobile Content Report 2016: what do Chinese mobile users read?
Toutiao (头条) is maybe the second biggest news/article mobile platform, besides WeChat. Toutiao has 260 million monthly active users and 50 million daily active users. The average user spends 70 minutes on the app.
This week, Toutiao released a Mobile Content Report Half- year 2016.
Here are some highlights of this report.
Mobile content consumption across all mobile platforms has been rapidly growing in the past years. Monthly active user reached 261 million in March 2016.
Social media users are reaching a ceiling, but users are spending more time on mobile, engaging in activities including video and reading news. View rate of videos on mobile app has seen a 160.56% increase.
Among video consumption, games (163.5%) and education (152.1%) have the highest rate of growth.
73.5% of text content are under 2,000 words.
Users increasingly prefer to rely on algorithms to discover new articles (58%), instead of traditional editor's pick articles (30%).
Mobile content has more and more diverse formats. Video consumption has the highest growth rate, 160.56%, compared with 148.71% for image content and 42.92% for text articles.
Gaming and sports are the two categories experiencing highest growth rate of mobile consumption.
74% of mobile content on Toutiao is within 2,000 words. This reflects the fact that most mobile users prefer to read shorter articles.
Users are slowly moving away from relying on traditional editor's pick to discover new content. They now prefer to rely on algorithms ranking content based on users' browsing history. Users are also interested in the trendy articles that their friends are reading.
According to Toutiao report, the three most popular topic are Baidu Scandal, BREXIT, and Korean drama.
Vertical growth for social medias (number of users) is already over in China. The real growth now relies in leveraging new formats such as video, audio, and later VR and AR in order to create horizontal growth among the existing user base.
This insight is key for marketers who try to increase their footprint: focus is no longer only about more users, but about better nurturing the existing users with ever-expanding breadth of content.