Apple News Analytics

Apple doesn’t allow Google Analytics tracking, so analysis takes place within Apple’s own analytics dashboard, or by manually downloading data for use in systems like Data Studio. For the purposes of this guide we’ll focus on Apple’s own dashboard, which is accessed by signing into iCloud, entering Apple ID and password, and selecting News Publisher. From there, the user is able to view their publication’s analytics dashboard by selecting the ‘Analytics’ tab at the top of the window.

Access to Analytics is restricted to users with Sales, Editor, Editor-In-Chief and Admin privileges. These privileges are granted once a user is invited to a News Publisher channel and their automatically-attributed ‘Viewer’ status is upgraded to any aforementioned status by an Editor-In-Chief or Admin. If you’re unsure who has access contact your Apple News representative or if you’re using FlatPlan contact our team.

Here’s how the Analytics dashboard looks:

Let’s look at some of the key Apple News metrics you can monitor in the dashboard.

Views

Article views. You will be able to track both unique and total views.

Reach

Apple defines this as headline impressions plus article views.

Follows

A user that taps to Follow your publication will be recommended more stories from that publication in the app . A direct link to your channel will also appear in navigation. Naturally then, amassing followers is key to driving growth.

Upon opening your publications’ Follows page, you’ll be presented with a simple chart displaying net follows per day in a given time period, and net follows across the whole of that period. Audience segmentation is available per territory. At the moment this comprises the US, UK, Canadian and Australian audiences, as this is where Apple News is currently available.

The grey dots along the x-axis mark significant events for your articles , such as  being featured in Top Stories, being featured in Spotlight or an Editorial Group.

Notifications

Notifications are invite-only, offered by Apple to publishers on a case-by-case basis. Readers can opt to receive push notifications which publishers can send as frequently as they like (we recommend no more than once or twice a day). On desktop, push notifications appear in the top right corner of a user’s screen, regardless of what they’re doing on their device at the time. On mobile, they appear in a small notification bar across the top of the screen when the device is being used, or on the lock screen when it is not.

Shares

Share analytics are grouped according to the platform they were shared through: Mail, Messages, Twitter, Facebook and Other. The majority of shares are often categorised as Other, which encompasses WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other dark social.

Shares outside of Apple News aren’t trackable, but at FlatPlan we include trackable links in article footers, which allow you to track user behaviour if they leave the app to visit your properties.

Discovery Source

Discovery Source breaks down how users land on your content. Traffic is broken down according to multiple measures.

There is limited demographic data available to illustrate how your channel can retain readers or to identify how popular articles can divert traffic to your other stories. But, by acknowledging significant deviations from the normal flow of traffic regarding, say, gender or age, an estimate of the flow of traffic through your channel can be made.

Loyalty

Apple News calculates loyalty by dividing users by the number of articles they’ve read in the past 28 days, or by the number of days they’ve visited out of the past 28. These numbers will match up almost exactly, and you can use either to analyse the loyalty of your users.

Get in touch with us to discuss analytics in more detail.