This is Part 3 in a series on the importance of authentications as a corporate-wide strategy. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
For publishers, consumer engagement drives numerous benefits: better readership, return visitation, higher ad prices, more ad inventory, ecommerce, and subscription sales – to name just a few. Authentications tie into each of these benefits, making it a must to not only align organizations to drive consumer engagement, but by extension, to ensure that the authentications associated with this engagement are optimized.
The rise of engagement
Anyone who reads articles online will recognize publisher tools to drive engagement, like surveys and polls. While these tools are still viable for publishers, many publishers find the balancing act that these pose challenging. Publishers that add these elements to their sites must constantly balance the user experience – such as load times, page real estate, and anything else that can detract from the readers’ journey – in order to keep the focus on the reader. Ultimately, while these tools can work to capture email addresses, they often fall short driving return visitors at the frequency businesses need.
Measuring successful interactivity
Interactivity can be judged by whether users are compelled to log in to participate, and how often they come back to an experience.
When considering how publishers and games have been intertwined for decades, consider one of the world’s most premier publishers: The New York Times.
While The New York Times did not invent the crossword, the brand halo of its crossword has led to hundreds of books collecting its crosswords for readers to complete. And, in a testament to the dedicated engagement its crosswords drive, as of 2024, the Times requires users to purchase a separate subscription to access its crosswords online.
Included in that same subscription is another noteworthy game: Wordle. When the Times purchased Wordle, it was one of the most notable acquisitions of a game by a news publisher in recent history. Wordle’s compelling design and once-a-day updates also add to virality with users sharing their own experiences with their friends and networks.
The fresh daily content at the centerpiece of these games, as well as their compelling nature, are examples of how publishers can maximize interactivity.
Optimizing for interactivity
While games are the gold standard, crosswords don’t make sense for every publisher and finding the next Wordle may prove to be a fruitless odyssey for anyone.
Contests offer an opportunity for publishers of any type to drive interactivity. First, by offering rewards to participants, contests are by default engaging, and encourage users who are serious about winning to check their results often, as well as try different tactics to improve their standings. Second, contests can offer participants the chance to improve their performance, specifically by leveraging their social networks and incentivizing others to engage with publisher content to improve their contestant’s performance.
Best practices
When designing a contest, consider the following details:
Pick a relevant type of contest. No matter the type of content you’re focused on, your contest should be closely tied to what you cover. Sports publishers should focus on sports contest content to best pique users’ interests; gardening publishers, gardening content – and so on.
Optimize for virality. This can mean one of two ways –
- Users find user-generated content more engaging, and will be more likely to promote their own contest participation if they’ve created the content that’s in focus.
- As mentioned, users should be able to tap their social networks to activate more votes and improve their odds of winning, in turn creating advocates among their social networks, all while driving every vote to authenticate.
Incentivize authentications. At the root of everything, users should have to authenticate to vote, turning contests into an authentication flywheel.
About the Author
Andrew Q. Kraft speaks on issues around identity, privacy, industry evolution, and what all of those mean to the publishing and broadcasting side of the business. Most recently, he served as President & Chief Operating Officer at The Arena Group. Prior to that, he served on the executive team at AppNexus in a variety of roles ranging from head of business and corporate development to the creation of AppNexus’ publisher-direct business to launching their ad sales team to his role as interim Chief Financial officer. Previously, he led the publisher-facing business at Collective after spending several years growing the IAB as head of revenue and member services.