The Indian Express
The Indian Express Grows Loyalty, Engagement and Subscribers with Personalization; Driving Sustainable Business Growth
The Indian Express Grows Loyalty, Engagement and Subscribers with Personalization; Driving Sustainable Business Growth
- 77% Uplift in CTR
- 8x Higher Average Monthly Pageviews
- 6x Higher Average Time Spent on Site
Company
The Indian Express, founded in 1932, is one of India’s most respected news organizations. The Indian Express delivers timely, trusted coverage across politics, entertainment, sports, and more, based on comprehensive analysis and fearless reporting.
Challenge
The Indian Express set out to personalize its homepage to drive higher user engagement, empower editorial teams with real-time analytics, and better highlight the content that resonates most with its audience. As part of a broader digital growth strategy, the team was also looking for new ways to surface relevant articles and create a more personalized reader experience.
Solution
Implement Taboola’s AI-powered Homepage For You and article page personalization solutions to deliver customized experiences and increase on-site engagement.
Results
Users who were served Taboola-powered personalized pages demonstrated a 6x higher average time spent on site, 8x higher average monthly pageviews per user, and 3x higher average pageviews per session than those who were served curated or automated recommendations.
Introduction
“We’ve also seen strong growth in new and retained subscribers in the form of higher loyalty and revenue with Taboola. They are now a vital partner in our digital growth strategy.”
– Sanjay Sindhwani, CEO, Indian Express Digital
The Indian Express, founded in 1932, is a leading publication in India that delivers “Journalism of Courage.” With coverage based on comprehensive analysis, and with fearless reporting, The Indian Express empowers readers with the truth behind every matter. So they can formulate their own stands on issues in a bias-free manner.
The Indian Express is part of The Express Group, one of India’s largest media conglomerates with 31 national editions, 15 publication centers, and four language dailies that reach over 3.31 million people daily.
The Indian Express Delivers Real-Time, Personalized Content with “Homepage For You”
The Indian Express was looking for a solution to enhance engagement both on their homepage and article pages. While they drove significant traffic from Google Search and Discover, they were seeking innovative ways to meet visitors with curated experiences based on their interests and keep them on site. Specifically, their goal was to increase key engagement metrics like pageviews per session and time spent per session.
The Indian Express had already been using 3rd party tools to track audience engagement, but they lacked insights into personalized user behavior and affinity. As a result, editors were left to manually curate content.
That’s where Taboola was able to help. Taboola uses the power of AI and data-driven insights to help publishers increase website engagement and deliver personalized experiences for each visitor.
The Indian Express first implemented Taboola’s Homepage For You, to dynamically tailor homepage content to match visitors’ interests. On top of that, Homepage For You provides editorial teams with the analytics they need to understand their readers. With these insights, editors can boost or pull back on content categories for each audience segment as needed, and optimize their editorial workflow.
“While Taboola improves monetization, they also provide contextual recommendations to our users based on their reading behavior on and off our websites. This collective information helps us to profile the users better.”
– Nandagopal Rajan, COO, Indian Express Digital
The Indian Express, for example, was able to personalize homepage sections like “Politics,” “Entertainment,” and “Sustainability,” to cater to different target demographics, such as civil service aspirants, younger audiences, and policymakers. They also highlighted premium content geared towards subscribers. Ultimately, Homepage For You gave editors greater flexibility and control to make real-time content curation decisions.
“The option to boost or de-boost certain sections that Taboola provides, allows us to preserve our editorial guidelines on various digital properties.”
– Aaron Pereira, Deputy Associate Editor, IndianExpress.com
The Indian Express Achieves 8X Higher Average Pageviews per User with Article Personalization Solutions
Beyond the homepage, The Indian Express also leveraged Taboola’s audience solutions to personalize article experiences across their website, or Audience Personalization. Audience Personalization takes AI-driven recommendations resulting in higher engagement, improved revenue, and enhanced user experiences.
The proof is in the metrics: Users who engaged with personalized content demonstrated a 6X higher average time spent on site, 8X higher monthly average pageviews per user, and 3X higher average pageviews per session than those who didn’t engage with personalized content. Taboola also generated 7% incremental pageviews for The Indian Express, leading to an increase in revenue. Additionally, The Indian Express observed a 77% uplift in CTR for personalized homepage content and 11% uplift in overall pageviews per session after article page personalization.
“The Taboola team showed exceptional agility and commitment while working with our team. During the integration, they shared global best practices, which were very helpful to benchmark our metrics.”
– Shyamal Datta, Head of Product, Indian Express Digital
These metrics indicate higher user interest and engagement from both subscribers and non-subscribers. Among daily active subscribers specifically, The Indian Express also saw increased homepage visits, which could yield higher conversions and reduced churn over time.
After seeing these results, The Indian Express swiftly decided to roll out Homepage For You and Article Personalization across their other major sites, including Financial Express, Jansatta, and Loksatta. Taboola is now a vital partner in their digital growth strategy.
“Taboola is solving a major problem by enabling better monetization and improved circulation on our digital properties. We have a long-term partnership with them which goes beyond a transactional relationship”
– Mukesh Singh, CRO, Indian Express Digital
“We've also seen strong growth in new and retained subscribers in the form of higher loyalty and revenue with Taboola. They are now a vital partner in our digital growth strategy.”
- Sanjay Sindhwani, CEO, Indian Express Digital