HuffPost UK
HuffPost UK drives 2.6x more time on site with DeeperDive
HuffPost UK drives 2.6x more time on site with DeeperDive
- 2.6x More time on site for readers who engage with DeeperDive
- 23% Higher session depth from DeeperDive users
- 13% reduction in total site bounce rate after DeeperDive launch
Company
HuffPost UK is the British edition of HuffPost, the internet newspaper founded in 2005, and operates as part of Independent Media, the network led by The Independent.
Challenge
HuffPost UK wanted to keep readers engaged on its own site as AI search engines drew audiences away, while meeting reader expectations for a conversational AI experience, and without compromising its editorial voice.
Solution
HuffPost UK implemented DeeperDive, Taboola’s GenAI answer engine, surfacing a conversational unit on its pages that answers reader questions using only HuffPost UK’s own content.
Results
Readers who engaged with DeeperDive spent 2.6x more time on site, total site bounce rate fell 13%, and DeeperDive users had 23% higher session depth.
Introduction
HuffPost UK is the British edition of HuffPost, the internet newspaper founded in 2005 that now runs newsrooms and editions across 15 countries. In the UK it covers breaking news and original journalism, reporting on the real lives of its readers and telling those stories across text, video, audio, and pictures.
HuffPost UK operates as part of Independent Media, the network led by The Independent that also brings together BuzzFeed UK, Tasty UK, and Seasoned. The group reaches a large, predominantly Gen Z and Millennial audience across web, video, and social, making HuffPost UK one of its most prominent digital-first news brands.
HuffPost UK turns to DeeperDive to meet reader expectations for conversational AI
Readers now expect to interact with content the way they interact with AI tools, asking questions in natural language and getting direct answers. HuffPost UK saw an opportunity to offer that experience inside its own environment, built on its own journalism, so readers could explore topics conversationally without leaving a trusted brand.
The requirement was that any such experience preserve HuffPost UK‘s editorial voice and draw only on its own content, giving readers the advantages of AI while keeping the original voice and context of the site. To deliver it, HuffPost UK adopted DeeperDive, Taboola‘s GenAI answer engine built for the open web. DeeperDive is an AI answer engine that lives directly on a publisher’s site and responds to readers using only that publisher’s content.
DeeperDive answers reader questions using only HuffPost UK's own content
On HuffPost UK, DeeperDive appears as a unit alongside articles, opening with a short “What You Need To Know” summary, a set of suggested questions, and an “Ask HuffPost UK anything” chat bar where readers ask their own questions in natural language.
Behind that interface is a retrieval-augmented generation pipeline. A reader’s question first passes a guardrail, then an LLM expands it into a short article that sharpens searches. DeeperDive matches that against HuffPost UK‘s content, which is ingested in advance and converted into embedding scores, and retrieves only the articles relevant to the question. It then generates an answer from those articles, combining them with Taboola Newsroom insights and the reader’s own history to keep the response relevant. Because every answer is built from HuffPost UK‘s journalism, those stories surface directly in the response, sending readers deeper into the site.
After a short response, a reader can ask DeeperDive a follow-up to go further, tap through to a related HuffPost UK article, or engage with a suggested question. Each path keeps the reader on the site and extends the session, turning a single question into ongoing exploration while keeping HuffPost UK‘s voice and audience relationship intact.
HuffPost UK readers who used DeeperDive read more and returned more often
Once live, DeeperDive reshaped how HuffPost UK readers engaged. Readers who used it spent 2.6x more time on site than those who did not, averaging around two minutes per visit against under a minute for non-users, and 80% of DeeperDive users stayed on the site after a conversation. Total site bounce rate fell 13% after launch.
Compared with non-users, DeeperDive readers viewed 23% more pages per session and returned for 18% more sessions per user, a sign the experience built habit. Total site scroll depth increased by 3% and around 17% of users engaged with DeeperDive, a high interaction rate, with the average conversation lasting about 1 minute.
The engagement showed up in revenue and satisfaction alike. DeeperDive drove 28% of total Taboola revenue, and 81% of user feedback was positive, confirming readers valued the experience. The questions themselves also gave HuffPost UK‘s editorial team a fresh signal on reader intent, with readers asking a notably wider range of free-text questions on the homepage than on article pages, where suggested questions dominated.
What struck us with DeeperDive is that readers don't just interact with the unit and leave. The questions they ask keep them with us, and we're seeing around 2.6x more engagement on our article pages alongside a meaningful drop in bounce rate. We’re excited to find technology that helps us improve the reader experience and are looking forward to continuing the evolution of it.
- Philippa Jenkins, Publishing Director, Independent Media