Fox Rocks the Socks Off of...Just About Everybody

by Eric Feinberg

The release of the American Customer Satisfaction Index on Tuesday was dominated by one finding: people don’t like Facebook. It was covered by virtually every news outlet you can think of, from national newspapers to magazines to television to radio to blogs…it was everywhere.

But the ACSI report didn’t measure only social media sites. It also covered news websites like ABCNews.com, CNN.com, FOXNews.com, MSNBC.com, NYTimes.com, and USAToday.com. The Facebook story was pretty interesting, so I think maybe people didn’t see the big news in news:

FoxNews.com beat the pants off all the other news sites, in almost every imaginable way. 

It was FOXNews.com’s first year being measured in the Index. They got an 82 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, the highest score any news site has ever received in nine years of measurement by the ACSI. This is huge, right? Especially considering all the grief FOXNews often gets about the slant on their reporting.

Not only did FOXNews.com get the highest ACSI score that any news organization has ever received, it killed the other cable news networks: MSNBC.com got a 74 and CNN.com got a 73 (eight and nine points behind FOXNews.com, respectively). It also killed ABCNews.com, which got a 75. And though FOXNews.com beat out print by a slightly smaller margin, it still killed the print websites that were measured: USAToday.com (77) and NYTimes.com (76). 

Here’s the real kicker: each and every one of those websites improved satisfaction since last year: ABCNews.com has increased almost 6% since last year. And FOX still left everybody in the dust.

 
What other news sites do you want us to measure? Next year, we’re considering HuffingtonPost.com (which actually has more visitors than FOXNews, according to EBizMBA.com). Thoughts? Please post in the comments.

Okay, so now that I have breathlessly heralded the total domination of FOXNews.com in the news and information category, why did it happen? 

• We survey only site users. Before anyone takes a survey, we ask them which news sites they have been to in the last three months. Then they get a survey about that news site. The result is an accurate assessment of customer satisfaction. FOXNews’ survey results reflect how their own users feel about FOXNews.com; MSNBC.com’s survey results reflect how their own users feel about MSNBC.com. Customer satisfaction scores are always a bit higher than general population satisfaction scores about any given website, because they have to have a decent level of satisfaction about the site if they’re already going there. If they hated it, they wouldn’t be going there. Imagine if we surveyed FOXNews.com readers about MSNBC.com and vice versa. The results would have been quite different. In real estate, it’s all about location; in web analytics, it’s all about segmentation. When reliably measuring satisfaction for our clients on a continuous basis, we purposefully take the aggregate insights and then segment them down to the nth segment (by visitor frequency, gender, age, intent, success, and more) so that we can bring clarity to varying satisfaction levels across differing audiences

• FOXNews users spend most of their time with FOXNews: More than two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents (site users) see FOXNews as their primary news source while FOX’s ideological counterpart, MSNBC.com, serves as the primary news source for less than half (49%) of its website visitors, online or offline. The site whose audience was least likely to consider it their primary news source, however, was USAToday.com (39%). Further, FOXNews.com visitors tend to rely solely on FoxNews for all of their news and information (inclusive of the FOXNews TV brand) whereas visitors to other sites tend to seek out multiple sources for news and information. For example, more than half (52%) of FOXNews.com users frequent fewer than two news websites on a regular basis. Compare that with NYTimes.com: only one in three NYTimes.com users looks at two news websites or less on a regular basis.

• FoxNews.com visitors may have lower site expectations: The simple definition of satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect. FoxNews.com visitors’ expectation levels are calibrated by the fact that they visit fewer sites than do other survey respondents. Since they visit fewer sites and thus have less experience with other news and information sites, they could have different and potentially lower expectations. The research also shows that FoxNews.com readers are slightly older, on average, and have lower income and education levels, all of which often correlate with lower expectations, according to our research.

• FoxNews has brand alignment: FoxNews.com seems to have successfully translated the personality of its on-air brand to its website. “Great brands and products must evoke a dynamic personality in order to attract passionate customers,” said Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality not included. I would add to Rohit’s quote “…in any channel at any time.” Whether you agree with the FoxNews worldview or not, it is undeniable that when expectations align with experience, that’s a winning – and satisfying - combination. Think about your business. A tough task for any website, network, company or person is to deliver on your core and key brand attributes in all channels. FoxNews has managed to introduce its corporate personality to its audience in each channel well.

Other thoughts and findings impacting our industry: 

• The 50/50 ad spend screen shifting theory: This study is starting to prove out my long-held belief about TV’s continuing, but loosening, grip on web traffic. We ask the question, “What medium do you prefer most for keeping up with news?” When you tally up personal computer, mobile and tablet access, that total ranges from 22% to 44% (FoxNews.com and CNN.com, respectively). Once that preference shifts to 50% or more across the board, we’ll see the long-awaiting flood of media mix changes that lead to significant online investment away from TV. Our decisions, our lives, our time will be invested more online than on TV and thus we’ll see the ad dollars follow. Follow the money is what they do on Wall Street. Follow the consumer is what they do with ad spend.

 

• Advertising engagement: There is a relationship between visit frequency and likelihood to look at ads on news sites. USAToday.com and ABCNews.com frequent visitors both being more likely to look at ads than CNN frequent visitors. The relationship between visit frequency and ignoring (not paying attention to) ads is less clear. For most of the sites, visit frequency tends to increase the likelihood of clicking on ads. ABCNews.com appears to be better than many of the other sites at generating clicks among visitors who come to the site weekly or more often. For most sites, there is a relationship between visit frequency and ad relevance. This is not the case for CNN, though. Ad relevance is not impacted by visitor frequency. In general, infrequent news site visitors are more likely to perceive ads as interfering their experience than are more frequent visitors.

• Paywalls: NYTimes.com users are most willing to consider paying for content on the site (9% of users would consider paying for content on that site) while only 2% of MSNBC.com users would consider it. Consideration is by no means activation, so let’s keep a close eye on The Times of London and others considering paywalls.

Bottom line: While it’s interesting to talk about the high satisfaction and what caused it, regardless of the cause, FOXNews is sitting on paydirt. Academic studies have shown that high satisfaction as measured by the ACSI leads to more loyalty, recommendations, repeat visits, and more. These kinds of actions translate to dollars for advertisers. After all, as an advertiser, would you rather spend your money on a website with viewers that are loyal, happy, recommenders? It’s great for your brand. 

There’s a whole lot more in the report and in my head. Download the full report at our website and post your comments and feedback below (I’ll respond, I promise). What else did I miss? Why do you think FOX dominated so much, and what does it mean for news and for advertisers? Who should we add to the study next year? Email me anytime to talk more about the content, media and entertainment worlds. Thank you. Be well.

Eric Feinberg is Industry Director for content, media, and entertainment at ForeSee Results. He’s on Twitter at @ericfeinberg and can be reached by email at eric.feinberg@foreseeresults.com. 

Comments

[Jordans 4]

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[Amanda Palmer]

Eric, is customer satisfaction what matters most for these websites, or is it the satisfaction of non-customers? To grow their customer base and increase readers, they are going to have to get and keep new readers. Fox's model may be good for satisfying their base, but is the same strategy that works for your base going to help you grow?

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Amanda, you’ve voiced a great point. Thank you for your comment. This study is focused wholly on the satisfaction of customers only and thus represents the view of that group only. My fundamental view on this subject is: Both are equally important. Non-customers are just as important as existing customers. Existing customers serve a great purpose to these sites as a recurring revenue stream and as recommenders of the site (via comments, sharing on Facebook and tweeting about articles). Non-customers can be categorized in one of two ways: 1) Those that aren’t even on the site at all or 2) First -time/infrequent visitors. These sites really only have control over the latter group. So when someone arrives at the site for the first time, they have that one shot to make a first impression to entice repeat visitorship. This group is, I agree with you, core to the growth of news sites audiences. Those sites’ customer experience professionals must listen to and understand what the expectations are from this unique first-time-not-yet-a-customer audience. I can tell you after analyzing satisfaction levels for hundreds of sites that those levels sometimes differ greatly. It depends. What this ACSI study does is externally benchmarks these sites against other websites, but what companies need to do is to “internally benchmark” their own segments against one another behaviorally (first-time vs. repeat visitors, those who watched a video vs. not, clicked on an ad, etc.) or attitudinally (engaged vs. not, by task completion, by age, gender, income, etc.). Listening leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to insight and action – and ultimately more customers!

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