The importance of audience segmentation for digital news media startups

Based on training at the Pakistan Entrepreneurial Journalism Program by GNMI.

According to the Sensor Tower, the top five Android apps classified under the “News” category in Pakistan are Quora, Twitter, Google News, Medium, and Flipboard.

The ranking pertains to the six months leading up to the 31st of January 2021, with the majority of the top five representing content discovery engines and knowledge sharing communities. These rankings are implicative of a tectonic shift in how the news and information in general is exchanged and consumed.

As taught at the inaugural Pakistan Entrepreneurial Journalism Program (EJP) held by the Global Neighbourhood For Media Innovation (GNMI), journalists from across Pakistan were shown data tools from Google and Facebook exemplifying the extent to which audiences in Pakistan have shifted their eyes to digital.

Badar Khushnood, the co-founder of Bramerz, shared data from the Facebook Audience Insights tool, which estimates that between 35 million to 40 million device IDs from Pakistan use the social networking service. He rhetorically cited the data to ask why would anyone use a research agency to question a thousand people when online platforms offer a plethora of data without any charge.

This was illustrated by a breakdown showing that the majority - over 22% - of the Facebook users in Pakistan are from Karachi, with remaining top cities being Lahore, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Multan, and Islamabad representing 17%, 5%, 4%, 4%, and 3% of the nations’ audience. The tool also shows the year on year audience growth rate per city, with Burewala growing at a whopping 50% with Sargodha and Quetta growing by 8% and 5% respectively.

One of the principle takeaways from the tools showcased was also to manage expectations. For a journalist reporting on matters pertaining Bahawalpur, which represents 1% of the 40 million Pakistani users of Facebook, the data helps a media owner come to terms with the reality that the social networking service may not drive an audience exceeding 400,000 unique visitors from Bahawalpur per day.

This recognition of the data landscape is just one of the many elements of expectation management and perhaps leveraging the data to not only reassess audience alignment but possibly also to craft a niche where applicable.

Attendees at the EJP learned from seasoned digital marketers, audience development specialists, and search optimisation doyens, including acclaimed journalists. The program is intended to help reporters from across the country come to terms with the new media landscape, illustrate how audiences can be understood, inform on the various paths of media distribution, and demonstrate the options for monetisation.

The program is currently inviting proposals from all 60+ attendees, of which 20 will be offered small grants of up to PKR 150,000 each to support the intended digital news product or outlet. The grant awardees will also attend a five-day advanced training in Islamabad during March 2021 and several 1-on-1 mentoring sessions to craft your startup ideas into a sustainable business models.

The list of winners will be shared once announced.