Gray Television
Gray Television Increases Pageviews Per Session Across 115 Sites with Taboola Homepage For You
Gray Television Increases Pageviews Per Session Across 115 Sites with Taboola Homepage For You
- 20% Increase in article pageviews per session
- 22% Uplift in homepage CTR across Gray’s 115 sites
- -5% Homepage bounce rate across Gray sites
Company
Gray Television is a leading television broadcast company and the largest owner of top-rated local television stations and digital assets in the U.S.
Challenge
Increase pageviews and engagement across Gray Television’s 115 publications while enhancing efficiency, providing digital teams with more time to produce impactful journalism.
Solution
Implement Taboola’s Homepage For You solution across Gray Television’s 115 websites, delivering personalized, AI-powered editorial recommendations for each website visitor.
Results
With Taboola’s Homepage For You solution, Gray Television has achieved a 20% uplift in article pageviews per session, driving millions of incremental page views by their loyal homepage audiences.
Introduction
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Gray Television owns and operates highquality stations in 115 television markets that collectively reach 36 percent of U.S. television households. Gray Television also owns video program production, marketing, and digital businesses, including Raycom Sports, Tupelo Honey, and RTM Studios, the producer of PowerNation programs and content.
Gray Television Delivers AI-Powered Content Recommendations with Taboola’s Homepage For you
Gray Television was seeking innovative ways to increase pageviews and engagement across their expansive portfolio of 115 digital properties. Still, the publisher didn’t want to add more responsibilities to their digital content producers’ already-full plates. In fact, Gray Television was looking to more efficiently allocate resources, giving producers more time to create high-quality articles and videos to serve the communities that rely on them for crucial news.
That meant Gray Television needed a next-level solution that could automatically optimize on-site content and be easily deployed and managed across over 100 websites.
That’s where Taboola was able to help.
Gray Television was already an exclusive and trusted Taboola partner, having integrated the Taboola Feed of sponsored and organic content across all of their websites to boost engagement and monetization. Now, Gray Television was ready to leverage another Taboola solution to optimize their own content: Homepage For You.
“We immediately saw the benefits of the Taboola Feed, both financially and through the quality of content recommendations it provided,” said Glen Hale, Vice President of Digital Content & Audience Development for Gray Television. “We knew that Taboola’s technology was successful in presenting content that was of interest to our users and readers. So we thought, ‘Why not use an internal tool to harness those capabilities with our organic content?’”
Homepage For You delivers AI-powered editorial recommendations on publishers’ homepages, providing each website visitor with content that is both relevant to the news cycle and personalized to their interests. Taboola’s AI leverages insights from over 600 million daily active users across 9,000 premium publisher properties to identify content that’s most likely to engage readers. Getting granular, Taboola’s recirculation algorithm has the power to personalize content experiences based on editorial policies and users’ locations, interests, and past sessions.
Gray Television Achieves 20% Uplift in Article Pageviews Per Session with Taboola Homepage For You
Taboola’s Homepage For You solution is designed to complement editors’ own curatorial decisions, giving them the power to decide which placements are AI-powered and which are hand-picked. So publishers can enjoy the benefits of data-driven automation while maintaining their brand voice and integrity.
Gray Television, for example, worked hand-in-hand with Taboola to ensure Homepage For You was implemented efficiently across each of their 115 sites with minimal operational overhead, making real-time updates and algorithm changes as needed. Taboola also provided reports to help Gray Television track performance.
Homepage For You has consistently delivered results that met or exceeded Taboola’s pre-launch estimates, driving millions of incremental page views each month through large increases in readers’ click through rates on the homepage, as well as a 20% boost to article page views per session.
“The proof is in the metrics,” Hale said regarding the performance of Homepage For You.
As hoped, this AI-fueled growth has allowed more time for Gray Television stations to focus on video content production. “Any solution that minimizes administrative tasks and frees up time for more creative tasks is a benefit to us,” Hale said. In fact, by keeping readers engaged and on-site, Homepage For You has helped Gray Television achieve its goal of increasing video views and monetization revenue.
Beyond just metrics, Homepage For You also provided Gray Television’s content teams with valuable insights about audience behaviors and content preferences. For example, Taboola’s algorithm can identify content topics with niche but engaged audiences, and make sure those topics are presented to the right readers across Gray Television’s network of 115 sites.
As Hale said, “Stations rightfully focus their resources on relevant local content, but we’ve learned that certain national issues can be relevant to anyone no matter where they are. That was an eye-opener.”
Ultimately, implementing Homepage For You has helped Gray Television meet their bottom line and align stakeholders around the power of data-driven personalization. “At this point, Homepage For You is over-performing,” Hale said, and acknowledging that Taboola is continuously making algorithmic improvements, added, “We only expect that over-performance to continue and accelerate.”
“Our weekly reports are right on target if not above the estimated lift that Taboola provided at the beginning of this process. The short answer is, it’s working.”
- Glen Hale, Vice President of Digital Content & Audience Development, Gray Television