Reading Statistics in 2022

Written By : Rashmi Singh

Generally, every digital publisher knows the direction where their readership and their business are headed towards. AI is taking over the content, people want short content, and other trends are already known. But statistics taken over a period of the last 12 months can give deeper insights into what your reader wants.

In this article, we are going to share readership statistics from the past year and some key takeaways that digital publishers can use to grow their businesses. Read on.

Most media companies are concerned over the fact that people are abandoning text-based content over videos. While it is true that the consumption of video content has gone up, a majority of people are still consuming content that is primarily text-based. 

One survey showed that about 60 percent of internet users prefer to read text-based content such as blogs. The total number of internet users crossed the mark of 5 billion last year. This means that about 3 billion people still consume text-based content, and this count is expected to increase as the number of internet users will increase over time. 

A large portion of the users who consume text-based content fall in the bracket of 40 years to 60 years. This means that blog and other types of text-based content consumers are more mature and more financially stable. This factor can play a huge role in the monetizing strategies of media companies.

The younger audience that falls in the bracket of 19 to 24 and 25 to 30 also read blogs but they prefer video and audio-based content over text-based content. Digital publishers can incorporate this statistic into their editorial plan and roll out content that is a mixture of all forms of media.

Distribution has the ability to make or break a media business. So, knowing statistics about content distribution becomes imperative for digital publishers so that they can invest the right amount of resources in the right place. 

Only a small number of people go directly to media websites. Instead, they search for a topic in search engines and then jump to the websites mentioned on the first page of search results. 

56 percent of the 18 to 24 years age group uses Google to discover content, while 53 percent of the 35 to 44 years use Google for the same. This number stays around 50 percent no matter what age group you take for up to the age of 60 to 65.

Users consume text-based content for a number of reasons such as to acquire knowledge, entertain themselves, and keep up with what is going on in the world. One survey revealed that the biggest reason why people consume text-based content is they want to learn something new.

A large number of internet users read blogs because they want to get recommendations for quality products. Influencers, as we already know, affect how people make purchase decisions. Many major media outlets have now separate media assets for product reviews and recommendations which acts as a big revenue stream. 

It is not a surprise to learn that most people do not read the whole content on a page. But the statistics might be a little surprising. 80 percent of all readers read headlines and move on as they do not find the headline interesting enough to read the full article.

Even if readers decide to stop scrolling and read the article, they do not read the whole article but only skim through it. About 43 percent of readers accepted in a survey that they skim through articles. And an average reader reads an article only for about 96 seconds. 

The reading statistics from 2022 confirmed what we already had a hint about. People are shifting to video content but there is still a large audience for text-based content. People read to get knowledge and get entertained. And you have to make your headline and article clear and crisp in order to get the reader’s attention.

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