Chartbeat’s second quarter international audience engagement insights indicate a disconnect between the regions with high Engaged Time (The Americas) and those with the largest percentage of loyal readers (Europe). In other parts of the world, Asia and Africa’s growing mobile readership continues to dominate global device traffic, similar to last quarter’s insights.

Here is our most recent snapshot of the international audience engagement landscape for publishers.

Latin America edges Southeast Asia in reader engagement

Readers in Latin America showed the highest average Engaged Time in consecutive quarters, followed by the Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions.

Asia leads referral traffic from search

Central Asia (28%) has the largest percentage of all pageviews coming from search engines, with China (26%) close behind.

Mobile device traffic remains highest in Africa

Mobile traffic has eclipsed desktop across the world. And in Africa, it remains the highest percentage of all pageviews at 77%, followed by Central Asia and Southeast Asia. 

(Related: Channels, conversions, and churn: Why better mobile UX is key for subscriber revenue)

Southeast Asia well ahead in pageviews from social media

Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East made up the greatest share in percent of all pageviews coming from social platforms, still driven largely by Facebook.

Northern Europe tops loyal readership

Northern European readers lead loyalty metrics for consecutive quarters, with the highest percentage of loyal* pageviews compared to total pageviews. Loyalty in the Middle East, along with Central and Eastern Europe, were not far behind.

* A loyal reader is someone who returns to your site in at least 50% of days in a two-week period.

International audience engagement insights: What we saw this past quarter

Takeaways on international audience engagement highlights from this past quarter:

Africa and Asia are mobile. This past quarter reminds us that content consumption via mobile devices is a global trend, with aggregators still serving as an influential referral source.

Europe is loyal. Each of Europe’s subregions tracked by Chartbeat, led by Northern Europe, make up the globe’s most loyal readers. As global publishers attempt to build revenue, European paid readership models could be one of the first places to look.

The Americas are engaged. Latin American (34.2 sec) and North American (31 sec) readers have the highest Engaged Time, yet fall on the lower end of the loyalty spectrum. How publishers in the Americas bridge that gap will be key to their goals of building subscriptions revenue.

 

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