Interactive Data Visualization: Publishing Friend or Foe?
The media landscape is oversaturated with content. User loyalty and traffic are down. Publishers are being forced to reevaluate their content strategies. Oh my!
Luckily, major help may be on the way.
Digital publishers emphasizing interactive data visualization are seeing boosted page appeal while engaging current users and attracting new ones.
Interactive data visualizations are responsive graphs, charts and other graphics that support the topic of an article and simplify complex data—enriching stories in ways that users can easily comprehend.
Digital publishers need this type of innovation now more than ever, and the reasoning largely traces back to one event.
In June of 2016, Facebook introduced an update to their News Feed Algorithm, prioritizing user posts over publisher posts. Understandably, this hurt publishers who had come to rely on the platform as a user acquisition channel.1
In fact, SimilarWeb reported in December 2016 that digital publishers are seeing double-digit traffic decreases from Facebook—some by as much as 50%.2
However, digital publishers should fear not; those who use interactive data visualizations find they are an effective way not only to stand out, but also increase social shares and reach through organic user interest.
“In a world where many organizations are covering pretty similar stories in often pretty similar ways, visual journalism can bring a real distinctiveness to the way the BBC covers the news agenda,” Amanda Farnsworth, the BBC’s visual journalism editor, explained on BBC.com.3
Likewise, Xaquín González Veira, who runs The Guardian’s 45-person interactive data visualization development team, said: “Anyone can write, but data visualization and visual storytelling are a way to differentiate your product, in the same way that building a strong community is important for your journalism.”4
A study conducted by analyst firm Demand Metric found that 38% of surveyed participants shared interactive content frequently or very frequently on social platforms—doubling the 17% of respondents who reported sharing passive content.5
Users share intriguing content, and interactive data visualizations are exactly that.
Shannon Perkins, a former editor of interactive technology for Wired.com, explained: “It keeps [users] and makes them want to go tell their friends about it because it looked cool and it felt cool to them emotionally.”6
The Financial Times has found great success in integrating interactive data visualizations into their editorial content.
During the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” vote to leave the EU, the FT created several interactive data visualizations to portray voter breakdown and exit-poll sentiment.
On the day of the referendum, their interactive data visualization of the results was by far the most popular page on FT, garnering 60 times more viewership than the average text-based story on the same subject, published on the same day.7
The FT is not alone. Other digital publishers are also seeing promising results.
The UK Telegraph created an automated and real-time process to generate unique interactive data-visualizations of goals scored in the Premier League, the country’s top soccer association. What followed were impressive lifts in social performance.
During the weekend of August 20-21 of 2016, 22 goals from 10 games were auto-published. These goals were then automatically formatted into visualizations and posted to the Telegraph Football Twitter account, where a single tweet of a visualization garnered 790 retweets compared to the average 80.8
Additionally, ABC affiliate KNXV of Phoenix saw a massive increase in its digital social performance after realigning their newsroom focus towards data visualization, boosting total website traffic by 77%, increasing their Twitter following by 100,000 and adding an additional 50,000 Facebook followers.9
Alas, it’s not all doom and gloom; interactive data visualization is proving to be of significant value to publishers.
1. Constine, Josh. “Facebook Puts Friends above Publishers in “News Feed Values” and Ranking change.” TechCrunch. TechCrunch, 29 June 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
2. Smiley, Minda. “US News Sites Saw a Double-digit Decline in Facebook Desktop Traffic LastQuarter.” The Drum. N.p., 17 Aug. 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
3. Farnsworth, Amanda. “What Is Visual Journalism?” BBC News. BBC, 10 May 2013. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
4. Southern, Lucinda. “Inside the Guardian’s Data Visualization Play for Rio.” Digiday. N.p., 09 Aug.
5. Rush, Brianne Carlon. “Using Interactive Content to Stand Out.” Relevance. N.p., 01 Nov. 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
6. Sutcliffe, Chris. “The Psychology of Data Visualisation: Beyond the Numbers.” Media News. Journalism.co.uk, 02 July 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
7. Pearson, Tom. “Communicating with Data — How the FT Explained Brexit.” Financial Times. N.p., 20 July 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017
8. Southern, Lucinda. “The Telegraph Built a Tool That Auto-creates Graphics of Premier League Goals.” Digiday. N.p., 31 Aug. 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.
9. Poiraud, Quentin. “Data Visualization & Journalism Combine to Increase Understanding.” ClicData. N.p., 26 Sept. 2016. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.