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50 Crucial Content Facts to Make Your Content Make a Difference Now
A collection of revealing content statistics and quotes to shape your content approach.
Content Consumption
As of April 2022, there were more than five billion internet users worldwide, which is 63.5 percent of the global population. — DataReportal
Source: Content Omniverse Fact Sheet
About 60% of all web traffic came through a mobile phone as of November 2022. — Statcounter Global Stats
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Americans spend about 8 hours online every day. This does not include time spent on passive activities, such as streaming music or video in the background while doing other tasks. — HighSpeedInternet.com
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Roughly a third of U.S. adults (31%) say they regularly get news from Facebook. A quarter of U.S. adults regularly get news from YouTube, while smaller shares get news from Twitter (14%), Instagram (13%), TikTok (10%) or Reddit (8%).
Fewer Americans regularly get news from LinkedIn (4%), Snapchat (4%), Nextdoor (4%), WhatsApp (3%) or Twitch (1%). — Pew Research Center
Source: Social Media Fact Sheet
“Mailgun, the email delivery service used by Substack and Ghost, said the online publishing industry had more than quadrupled its sending volume over the last two years.” — The New York Times
Source: Email Fact Sheet
Nearly all (95%) American teenagers ages 13 to 17 report using TikTok, with 16% saying they use it almost constantly. — Pew Research Center
The majority of online video is now watched on a smartphone, and mobile is forecast to account for 72% of the growth in spending on online video advertising. — Forrester
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Nearly two in three American adults (64%) say fabricated news stories cause a lot of confusion when it comes to the basic facts of current news and events. — Pew Research Center
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
In 2022, 38% of Americans said they listened to a podcast in the last month. Although this is down from 2021, it is up from 2020 and 2019, reflecting an end to the pandemic related uptick in podcast listening. — Edison Research
Source: Podcasting Fact Sheet
Bloggers are most likely to say they publish How-to articles, Lists, Guides and eBooks, and News and trends. — Orbit Media Studios, 9th Annual Blogging Survey
Source: Content Marketing Fact Sheet
Content Operations
“As you plan your content operations, consider establishing a center of content excellence. A center of content excellence (CCE) is a hub (virtual or physical) that concentrates expertise and resources to achieve world-class content capability. A CCE brings together people, tools, knowledge, and other kinds of resources around content, focusing and directing them to maximize value. Particularly in larger organizations, content professionals may be embedded throughout teams and departments, but never really connect with each other. A centralized hub can help mitigate that fragmentation.” — What Is A Center of Content Excellence?
Source: Content Science Review
Fifty-eight percent of CMOs report that their teams lack the capabilities needed to execute on their strategy. The top three capability gaps CMOs report are marketing data and analytics, customer understanding and experience management, and marketing technology — Gartner
Source: Content Operations Fact Sheet
Leaders who communicate a clear vision for content are 5 times more likely to report success than those who do not. — What Makes Content Operations Successful?
Source: Content Operations Study
There are five levels of Content Operations:
1. Chaotic, 2. Piloting, 3. Scaling, 4. Sustaining, and 5. Thriving.
Forty-six percent of organizations are at levels 1 and 2, the earliest stages of content operations maturity. Compared to our 2017 update, more organizations are at these low levels.
— What Is the State of Content Operations Now?
Source: Content Science Review
“To scale operations for your content marketing program use data to optimize your content planning and production.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Organizations that report being very successful with content are more likely to be at a higher content operations maturity level. More than half of the very successful are at the two highest levels of maturity: 41% were at level 4 and 14% at level 5. — Content Operations Study
Source: Content Operations Study
“[To mature your content operations] you need to know what you’re trying to achieve, always be willing to learn and iterate, and figure out what your team does best.” – Lymari Morales, Associate Dean for Communications and Marketing, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Source: Content Visionaries: Content Operations Maturity at the Bloomberg School of Public Health
“Our content operations research has repeatedly found that content leaders and their teams face no shortage of challenges. A content playbook helps overcome most of the top challenges by bridging strategy and execution.” — What Is A Content Playbook?
Source: Content Science Review
Only 21% of those surveyed describe their content workflows as “very efficient.” Respondents were most likely to say their content creation workflows needs improvement, followed by their content planning workflow. — The State of Digital Content, 2023 Edition, a study from Canto, conducted by Ascend2
Source: Content Operations Fact Sheet
Content Intelligence + Effectiveness
Our Content Operations Study identified five levels of organizational maturity. Most organizations are at level 2 or 3. Only 4% fall into the level 5 category. But all of those organizations regularly evaluate content effectiveness. And organizations at any level who report measuring content are more likely to report success — Can Content Structure Boost Revenue By 753%?
Source: Content Science Review
“We find that when there isn’t a lot of thought to strategy…about 20% of content is having 80% of the results.” — Colleen Jones, Interview with MarketMuse
“Getting started with content evaluation—setting up the process—takes a significant amount of time. To do it right, you need to be very intentional about what it is you’re evaluating against. You need to be mindful of the content goals for your customer/end-user. You also have business or organization goals to keep in mind, and your content will be a key driver in meeting those…or not.” — Cory Bennett, AT&T
Source: Content Visionaries: Content Measurement and Evaluation at AT&T
Content effectiveness is hitting the sweet spot of overlap between your company’s goals and the goals of your customers or users. So, it makes sense that a strong correlation exists between measuring content effectiveness and content success. If you have a good handle on how effective your content is, you can make better decisions faster. — The 5 Best Ways to Use Content Effectiveness Insights
Source: Content Science Review
71.7% of people who said that content [in a digital experience] was not relevant indicated the content was too general. — ContentWRX
Source: The Content Advantage
“Channel analytics can give you more specific details than web analytics about who your [content] audience is. For example, Facebook Audience Manager and Twitter Audience Insights can tell you demographics, interests and more.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Content professionals who reported the ability to evaluate content’s impact and the freedom to experiment with content options were significantly more likely to report content success. — Content Science
Source: Content Science, Content Operations + Leadership Benchmark Study
People who reported that content was easy to find were significantly more likely to report that it was accurate, relevant, and useful than were people who experienced difficulty (but eventually found the content they needed)—86.2% versus 39.4%. — ContentWRX
Source: The Content Advantage
Content Channels
“One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing is in how customers want to communicate with support teams. According to Forrester’s research, prior to the pandemic, messaging [SMS, WhatsApp, mobile chat, etc.] was ranked fifth overall in terms of channel usage. Now, it’s second.” — Intercom / Forrester Consulting
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available. — Hubspot
Source: Email Fact Sheet
The global conversion rate—people who visit websites to convert (buy a product, for example)—still hovers around 2 to 4 percent. That rate range has not changed since 2003. — Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly Index
Source: The Content Advantage
The social networks with the most monthly Gen Z users are Snapchat (42.0 million), TikTok (37.3 million), and Instagram (33.3 million) — eMarketer
About half of marketers say they have a Web3 strategy. The top elements in their Web3 strategies are virtual products, VR and / or AR, and cryptocurrency. — Salesforce
Source: Content Technology Fact Sheet
The U.S. ad industry has lost “approximately 50% to 60% of the signal fidelity from third-party identifiers” because of changes to Apple and Firefox’s browser. — IAB
Source: Content Marketing Fact Sheet
About 90% of Americans ages 18 to 49 say they ever buy things online using a smartphone, compared with 69% of adults 50 to 64 and 48% of those 65 and older. — Pew Research Center
Source: Mobile Fact Sheet
Eighty percent of marketers find influencer marketing to be effective. And, 89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels. — MediaKix
Source: Influencer Marketing Fact Sheet
Misinformation is a top 10 threat to growth. — PwC 24th Annual Global CEO Survey
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
Content Automation + Personalization
“AI is the only way we’re going to be able to deal with the fact that the demand for content is increasing exponentially. We’re going to have to automate the production of certain aspects of content.” — Noel McDonagh, Dell EMC
Source: The Content Advantage
“With the end of third-party cookies on the horizon, 68% of marketers have a fully defined strategy to shift toward first-party data.” — Salesforce
Source: Credibility + Trust Fact Sheet
Creating personalized messages and experiences requires intimate knowledge of customer journeys, relevant content that drives action, and technology that helps deliver and measure experiences. Brands need to be extremely thoughtful in how they personalize their content today…focus on showing customers you can help them first. – Gartner, Rethinking Personalization for Maximum Impact
Source: The Content Future
22% of organizations are using AI or machine learning in some capacity related to content. This is up from 15% in our 2017 study. — Content Operations Study
Source: Content Operations Study
73% of executives say their organizations have embarked on a path to intelligent automation, up 58% from 2019. Those organizations range from piloting, with 1 to 10 automations (37%), to scaling, with 51 or more automations (13%). — Deloitte
“Top of mind for me for 2023 is managing content for personalization at scale, which encompasses many things within content strategy, content ops, and content engineering—content modeling and structure, authoring experience and change management, localization—as well as working with technical teams, and then orchestrating and building user experiences with the content built for personalization.” – John Collins, Atlassian
“Advanced personalization technology can enable you to offer content based on your customers’ behavior, their roles, their preferences, or a combination.” — Colleen Jones, Founder of Content Science
Source: Introduction to Content Marketing Course, LinkedIn Learning
Executives are most likely to say process fragmentation and a lack of IT readiness are the top barriers to scaling intelligent automation. — Deloitte
“With companies and organizations continuing to prioritize enabling their customers and members to be self-sufficient, AI-driven predictive—and prescriptive—content will continue to be the holy grail, and a differentiator for customer experience. Organizations will continue to get better at proactively providing content based on user characteristics and other contextual parameters—and, in response to consumer demand, that content will be increasingly opinionated, providing more decision support and ‘best practice’ advice to content consumers.” – Toni Mantych, ServiceNow
Almost half of organizations are trying to offer personalized content experiences, up from 38% in our 2017 study. 65% of organizations that offer personalized content experiences report using behavior criteria such as previous content viewed. 50% report using demographic criteria. — Content Operations Study
Source: Content Operations Study
Artificial intelligence is living up to its potential for content. These tools can accelerate creating content at a high level of quality. I think of it as these tools take you to 80% complete, leaving you with about 20% to do…usually final polishing or refinement. — 4 Content Technology Trends to Watch
Source: Content Science Review
If brands fail to offer a personalized experience, 45% of consumers say they’re likely to take their business elsewhere. — Segment
Nearly 90% say they are more likely to continue shopping on a website that offers a personalized experience, and this includes 96% of Gen Z and 97% of Millennials. Moreover, 84% say personalization influences their purchase choices. — Elastic
“Since we launched the infographic last year, certain trends have emerged. The area of AI-generated content in particular is maturing at a rapid clip. This year we are listing 17 different AI tools that either offer AI-powered writing, image, or video creation. Due to more AI tools as well as growth in content as a service companies, the number of tools we are listing in the Content Creation category has tripled since last year.” — Content Technology Infographic
Source: Content Science Review
Get these facts on presentation-ready slides over at Content Science Review
