Over the past several months we have been taking a closer look at how multimedia impacts news consumption by studying the habits of our own PRWeb news consumers.  The research combined quantitative analysis of usage patterns drawn from Web statistics with a survey that was sent out to a segment of our e-mail opt-in subscribers.

Here are some top-line takeaways from that research, which will be also discussed in my upcoming presentation at Newcomm Forum this Friday.

1.  People spend more time on releases that contain multimedia – Images really do have an impact on how much time people spend consuming news releases.  In the sample of news releases we studied, releases with no images had an average time-on-page of 2:18.  However, releases that contained images had an average time-on-page of 2:47.

2.  Bloggers and journalists actually use multimedia – Not only does multimedia positively enhance the experience of news releases, evidenced by indicators such as increased time-on-page, but news producers (journalists and bloggers) actually use multimedia they find on news releases to help construct their ensuing stories.  Almost half (48%) of journalists and bloggers who subscribe to receive PRWeb news releases report having used an image or video in a news story or blog post they have written.

3. Bloggers and journalists favor some forms of media over others – When it comes to various types of multimedia, content producers clearly favor images.  88% of producers agree or strongly agree that images enhance their experience of a news release while about half (52) agree or strongly agree that video enhances their experience of a news release.  Only 28% agreed that audio enhances a news release.

Filed under: Multimedia by Jiyan