According to eMarketer, the highest percentage of consumers report using smartphones to access news content—we’re seeing a similar trend for different types of content as well.
As more and more of publisher’s audiences are consuming content via their smartphones, it’s becoming more and more crucial to understand the mobile mindset and optimize your site accordingly.
We’ve been running tests to analyze infinite feed-related behavior, and noticed some specific smartphone behaviors.
Readers want the infinite feed experience on their mobile devices.
We analyzed over 500 publishers that have implemented Taboola Feed and found both an increase in session depth and a decrease in bounce rate.
Although infinite feeds impacted reader behavior on both mobile and desktop devices positively, a stronger impact was consistently found when consumers browsed from their mobile phones. Impact signifies the percentage at which session depth and bounce rate change. Specifically, the change in session depth was an increase of 32%, and a decrease in 67% when it came to bounce rate impact for smartphones.
Several psychological studies related to mobile phone consumption point to three main reasons why infinite feeds have a stronger impact on mobile devices.
We feel closer to our phones than to desktop devices, feeds are easy to navigate on mobile devices, and feeds work better for low attention spans, which are very common in the mobile experience.
We feel close to our smartphones.
A couple of weeks ago, I woke up in the morning and realized to my horror that my phone wasn’t responding. My level of anxiety went through the roof, and I was frantically searching for solutions and Apple stores near my apartment.
According to technology researchers Thorsteinsson and Page, it’s not just me. Recent studies found that most smartphone users experience anxiety or frustration when they are unable to use their phones—mostly because we’ve developed a strong emotional attachment to them.
This strong emotional attachment has developed as we spend more and more time with our phones, now reportedly a whopping 2 hours and 51 minutes a day. As said in Thorsteinsson’s study, it makes us feel as if it’s an extension of ourselves because of how personalized it is.
According to an analysis of the last 6 months, consumers prefer to consume content on mobile phones in general, but especially so if the topics were personal as in the health and dating categories.
The increase in CTR for these example topics on smartphone as opposed to desktop devices suggests that people prefer consuming these topics on their phones—perhaps when it’s a more personal topic.
Infinite feeds are in line with the ‘thumb scrolling experience.’
Mobile phones are exactly that: mobile. We need to be able to access content on the go, and that sometimes means only having one hand available. Only having one hand available means we’re scrolling with our thumb.
Infinite feeds, which require a very simple scrolling experience, can be effortlessly navigated with just one thumb.
Infinite feeds are better for short attention spans.
Being on the go not only affects web navigation, but also how much attention we can allocate to a task.
Your readers want to be entertained when they are on the bus waiting for their stop, but they’re often multi-tasking by needing to pay for their ticket or by announcements of the next stop.
A study by the Nielsen Norman Group found that the average session duration of a desktop lasted 150 seconds, and was more than twice as long as a mobile user’s because of the many interruptions they deal with when using mobile devices.
They don’t have the time or patience to search for interesting content, and they need a design that will allow for quick ‘recoveries’ from interruptions.
Infinite feeds are a great platform for these users because no search is needed, and because the orderly design and small number of items on the screen make it easy to recover from the interruption.
The ‘Unit Bias’: The Science Behind Why Endless Content Keeps Users Consuming
Chauncey Neyman, a computer scientist who studied addictive software designs in California, claimed that consumers are spending more time on feed formats than they originally intended.
Surprisingly, the reason why is related to M&M’s.
The unit bias: infinite scroll is like a quarter-cup scoop of M&M’s
Three scientists from the University of Pennsylvania ran a series of studies regarding portion size and food intake. In one of the studies, they set a large bowl of M&M’s at the entrance to an apartment building and put either a tablespoon scoop or a quarter-cup scoop (depending on the day) in the bowl with a sign to ‘please use the spoon to serve yourself’ and ‘Eat Your Fill’.
In the days that people took M&M’s with the quarter-cup scoop, people consumed significantly more M&M’s as compared to the days where they took M&M’s with the tablespoon scoop, even though they were invited to take as many scoops as they wanted.
The above phenomenon is called the “unit bias” and is explained by the tendency to interpret
the unit in front of us as a culturally ‘‘proper’’ portion—in this case, a tablespoon or quarter cup.
The study claims that this might be the source to the pressure that we feel to finish what’s been served to us and what’s on our plate.
If we take this to the world of infinite feeds, because there is virtually no end to the materials we can consume via infinite scrolling, consumers have the tendency to consume much more.
Similar to the unit bias, here too people tend to ‘finish what’s on their plate’, or, finish what’s been given to them on the webpage.
This leads to consumers spending much more time on infinite feeds than originally planned.
The infinite-scrolling experience decreases bounce rate because of the unit bias
Taboola has been offering publishers an infinite-scrolling feed of content. Not only has RPM gone up substantially, but we’re also seeing other engagement metrics changing, like bounce rates for example.
In a sample of over 500 publishers who have implemented Taboola Feed, we saw a decrease of 2 to 3% in bounce rates as opposed to a standard widget—for mobile more than for desktop.
Consumers who are engaging with Taboola Feed are bouncing less from publishers’ sites. The common visual cues they associate with an end to their browsing session—things like the article’s comment section, other navigation button, or a page footer—are lacking.
Thus they interpret the whole feed as one unit that they want to ‘finish’, and ultimately consume more content.
Infinite feeds are the future.
The tendencies we have when we interact with content via mobile make it crucial to give the user an optimal experience. This is why so many publishers are using Taboola Feed on desktop and mobile devices.
Taboola Feed recommends the best content for users in an engaging environment much like social feeds.
Users enjoy the familiar scrolling experience—they engage with an endless feed that contains sponsored content, organic content, and sponsored video, as well as third-party cards like our recently released weather card.
Taboola Feed has already been implemented by publishers worldwide, including the NY Daily News, Euronews, Bauer UK, BT, weather.com, and many more.
