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Mobile video helps The Week’s new app find favour

The Week UK recently launched ‘The WeekDay’, becoming one of the first publishers to deliver a news app with videos created primarily for mobile use. The content is created with a mobile audience in mind, and later adapted for distribution on social media.

by WAN-IFRA Staff executivenews@wan-ifra.org | December 22, 2015

The app publishes a twice-daily news roundup; one at eight in the morning, and an updated version at five in the afternoon. The one-minute videos should bring readers quickly up-to-date on the essential stories of the day.

Content built for a mobile audience
Producing mobile-first content requires different thinking. If you don’t get it right, 50% of users uninstall your app immediately according to an IBM survey. And even if they do keep it, you need to stay engaging, because ‘a typical user has 24 apps installed and only uses 5’.

Recognizing that short-form works best, The WeekDay’s daily news digest contains the three main news stories of the day, using text overlay styled for easy reading, which enables users to follow the story even if they’re not wearing their headphones.

“In the context of what we’re producing, having this form of video is quite a neat way to go about it,” Arion McNicoll, Deputy Editor of The Week UK, told the World Editors Forum.

“When creating mobile video, many publishers primarily have a social platforms in mind. What makes this interesting is how The Week is creating mobile video to build habits in its own app,“ said Garrett Goodman, Director of Business Development EMEA at Wochit, the company that provides the online video software.

Wochit enables editors to create a video in around 15 minutes, which is a much shorter turnaround time than traditional production methods offer according to Goodman. “With access to a gallery of fully licensed images from partners like AP and Reuters, it’s a much more accessible way of creating video,” he adds.

In terms of audience measuring, The Week UK’s team is still flying blind as they’re yet to find analytic software to measure their mobile audience.

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