Summary
In the shifting landscape of digital audio content, engagement metrics provide a window into audience behavior and content effectiveness. This case study compares the engagement data between verbatim narrations and transformed audio to unearth why transformed audio garnered more consistent engagement than verbatim narrations. The initial strong interest in verbatim narrations indicate an audience appetite for audio content, while the decrease in repeat listenership suggests a poor audio experience. Comparatively, transformed audio maintained a steady engagement rate, a critical indicator of listener retention and content value. The insights drawn from this analysis offer actionable strategies to enhance content engagement by transforming the original text content into a script designed for listening.
Definitions
“Verbatim narrations” are word-for-word audio readings of the source text. In these versions of an audio episode, the source text has not been edited in any form. Each word is chronologically read out loud.
“Transformed audio” is a scripted reading of the source text. In these versions the source text is edited so that the listening experience is different from the reading experience. The scripting is done in a way to enhance the engagement and retention of the material. Learn more about what transformed audio is, and the science behind it.
Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders - Audio Newsletter Experiment
Google's accelerator team based in North America produces a weekly newsletter to engage their existing community of upcoming program events and resources. After monitoring the readership engagement for several years, the team was looking for novel ways of driving deeper engagement with the newsletter.
The team turned to audio to drive higher click-through rates within the newsletter and deepen engagement with the content. By using audio, the program team would be offering a more convenient way of consuming the weekly newsletter contents while also being able to track how far into the newsletter the audience was tuning in.
Upon launching the audio capabilities, the team noticed that although initial interest in the audio offering was high, listeners were not listening for very long. In order to address this concern, the team switched from verbatim narrations to transformed audio in order to drive engagement.
With the content produced for the same target audience, the following case study demonstrated how the nature of the audio itself can drive different levels of engagement.
Verbatim Narration Performance
The Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders team began by transforming their weekly newsletter into verbatim narrations. These were word for word readings of the newsletter content. With the launch of the first audio episode, there was a high initial interest. However, this interest did not translate into sustained engagement as the average and median listening times displayed a sharp decline with subsequent episodes. The initial high engagement with the first audio episode indicates an appetite for listening to newsletters but a poor audio experience.
Transformed Audio Performance
As the goal of launching audio for the Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders program was to drive deeper engagement with the content, the team decided to experiment with transformed content to improve audio listening times. The transformed audio episodes demonstrated a remarkable consistency in engagement. The transformed audio engagement rates performed better than the verbatim narrations at the following rate:
- general click through to the audio grew by 80%
- average listening session extended by 110%
- median listening session extended by 200%
Deepening Engagement with Transformed Audio
When comparing the performance of the verbatim narrations to the transformed audio, not only did the overall numbers grow, but transformed audio maintained a closer correlation between average and median listening times, indicating a uniform engagement level. This pattern reflects a steady listener interest and suggests that transformed audio is more engaging for the listener, leading to better completion rates. For the program team, this meant that more of the information was consumed.
For Content Marketing teams looking to deepen the engagement with their content, transformed audio can serve as a much better listening experience driving both average and median listening session lengths.
Try it out for yourself
Verbatim Narration of this Case Study
Transformed Audio of this Case Study
