Google Real Time Content Insights

Google committed $300M (in total, including future investments) for its Google News Initiative in July 2018 as a part of the funding for independent journalistic projects. Google, Internews, and DataLEADS collaborated on this effort, while BoomLive, Alt News, First Draft, and Storyful provided technical and programmatic assistance.

Many media outlets, including BuzzFeed, Business Insider, and Conde Nast, have been using (and have used) News Consumer Insights (NCI, a product by Google). It focuses on providing valuable data for publishers who usually collect the same via Google Analytics. This helps identify and analyze potential paying subscriber categories based on how users engage with the content.

And now, Google has built on the NCI product with a new tool called Real Time Content Insights (RCI). RCI is dedicated to keeping publishers up-to-date on current events and helping them explore trending stories that could bring in more viewers. It empowers news publishers to uncover the underlying news stories that are insightful to their readers and keep them coming back for more.

NCI data was more valuable to the publisher’s business or audience development teams. But, RCI adds value for editors and authors by helping them understand the dynamics of the content on their site. This includes identifying what is trending, what’s dropping off, and what’s gaining momentum.

The new tool, RCI, is here to help with — 

• Getting the perspective of real time readers.
• Real time tracking of highly popular content on the website.
• Staying abreast with local (content-specific) trends.
• Providing the newsroom with interactive data visualization tools.
• Discovering the top-performing posts and clips.
• Staying abreast with local (content-specific) trends.