ABC Pressures Apple to Make Changes to iOS’ News App

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American broadcaster ABC News has confirmed that it’s experienced significant audience growth since joining Apple News, reports Digiday UK. But it’s calling on Apple to implement more customizable push notifications.

The firm said that since enabling Apple News alerts, its added over 400,000 subscribers to its database. In comparison, more than two million people use the company’s self-developed mobile news service. The firm revealed that more people open the alerts issued through the ABC News App, though.

According to ABC News Digital vice president Colby Smith, open rates for the app stand between 2 and 5 percent. He attributes the success of the ABC News app to personalized alerts.

With the app, users can opt to be sent news alerts based on their interests, the types of articles they read and their location among other areas. Currently, Apple News doesn’t offer these options.

Smith said that ABC has spent “a lot of time on is using explicit and implicit indicators to send personalized alerts”. Speaking about the ABC News app, he said: “If we send an alert about news that’s happening by your intersection, you’re naturally more likely to open that alert.”

For many news publishers, Apple News has become a useful tool for reaching out to new subscribers. Smith said that out of the 400,000 Apple News users, around half of them open alerts.

This isn’t a bad statistic, but users would likely be more inclined to click on to alerts if they were relevant. Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t announced any plans to roll out personalized alerts.

Smith explained that Apple News is also becoming useful for referrals but that growth is still a tad low. At the moment, he’s experiencing “double-digit percentage points”.

The news executive also spoke about ABC’s audience development team. He said: “They are becoming an increasingly vital part of how we react to the landscape,” said Smith.

“This can also require strategic decision-making in terms of when to put content on individual platforms. For instance, some things we might publish on Apple News but won’t publish on Facebook.”

“It’s important to have that one group that can oversee all of those distribution decisions and relay important feedback to editorial.”

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