Why you can’t afford to ignore Apple News
Despite all the early scepticism, Apple News is now the most used UK news app. Time to stop ignoring it.
The Apple News app held its top spot as the most popular news app in the UK in September and now reaches almost one in three people, according to data from Ipsos iris.
It’s remarkable the power that being the platform maker has when you’re committed to a product, isn’t it? Remember — every single Apple device sold for the last few years has News built in by default, and advertising its presence subtly on the notifications screen.
It's fair to say that a lot of people were sceptical about Apple News when it launched. The time for that now over. It's established itself as part of people's reading habits, as Apple has remained committed to developing it as part of ist services offering.
It’s no wonder, given the power of Apple, that it has eclipsed things like the BBC news app.
The second most popular app BBC News was used by 12 million people. Only the Apple News app reached more than a quarter of UK internet users aged 15 and over (31% reach) while the Apple News and BBC News apps were the only ones with an audience reach in the double figures.
One third of the UK online population? That’s a huge audience surface, and so, if you don’t have an Apple News strategy, you probably need one. If you’re not there, you need to understand why, and make sure that you know what you’re missing out on, and that you’re comfortable with that. If you are there, you need a strategy for “top-slicing” the best readers from the service and bringing them into a more direct relationship with you (newsletters?).
Now, yes, there are some complications here. For example, these figures give us no sense of how much of this activity is in the base Apple News, and how much is in Apple News+, the paid version of it. But, again, the fact that this number of people are looking at the app means that it’s worth as paying as much attention to it as we do search, social and the other forms of audience acquisition we use.
You really can’t just ignore Apple News any more.
- Apple News integration is coming to the Weather app, of all things, in iOS 16.2, which will probably be out later in the year.
This post is for subscribers only
SubscribeAlready have an account? Log in
