Scrolling points to engagement

Warc, 12 August 2014

VIENNA, VA: Advertisers can increase viewability rates and brand awareness by examining internet users' scrolling behaviour, new research has found.

For its report 'How Scrolling Matters', AddThis, a content engagement platform, analysed 50,000 unique, anonymous web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox, that scrolled page content among randomly selected websites.

It found that the level of scrolling and content engagement was dependent on different devices, social networks, content categories and search engines.

Thus, for example, Mac users were 17% more likely to scroll and explore content on the page than people using a PC. And scrollers were 46% more likely to share content via Facebook but 33% less likely to share content via Twitter.

More significantly, ads delivered on pages optimised with content engagement tools had an 85% higher viewability rate. And delivering media to sites with higher engagement rates led to a 30% increase in brand awareness.

Scrolling, AddThis argued, was a strong sign of content interest – alongside sharing, emailing, bookmarking, copy/paste URL and printing – and was an important trend to watch. Publishers and advertisers, it suggested, should regard it as another key indicator when planning content marketing and media strategies.

Other findings from its research included the fact that scrolling behaviour is 55% percent more likely to occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and 20% more likely to occur during business hours.

Some areas are also more likely to scroll than others. The largest concentration of scrollers is located in the Northeast of the US, which represented six out of the seven most active states for scrolling activity. Additionally, browsers located in $100K+ average income zip codes are 8% more likely to scroll content compared to other parts of the country.

AddThis further warned that social marketing may not be optimal for medium and long-form content with multiple pages as 65% of social referrals resulted in a single page view.

Data sourced from Business Newswire; additional content by Warc staff