200 Content Amplification Headlines that Drove Ridiculous Amounts of Engagement Post-Click

After combing through nearly 2,500 native ad unit headlines from 2018 in the inPowered labs we found the 200 that drove very high content engagement rates post-click. As a matter of fact, the content engagement rates ranged between 65% and 97%.

Similar article headlines like this one focus on click through rates (CTR) and not engagement post native ad unit click. This is important to note because after pouring through millions of dollars’ worth of data we found that there is absolutely no correlation between CTR and post-click content engagement. In some cases, we discovered a negative correlation. This is indicative of bot traffic.

Other articles that share best practices when writing headlines focus on what gets users to click not necessarily engage. Remember, there’s no correlation between the two. That means there may be other best practices that help drive engagement.

Methodology

To determine whether content was engaged with we used Chartbeat Analytics’ 15 seconds dwell time benchmark. It states that after 15 seconds, on average, 80% of the content was consumed by 70% of the visitors. In addition, we separated the headlines by content type as shown below in order to glean additional insights.

• Article
• How-To
• List
• What Post
• Why Post
• Brand Mention

The “Article” category is the catch-all for content that didn’t fit in any of the other ones. “Brand Mention” is the category with headlines containing a brand or product name. We chose to include this category because of the on-going debate in content marketing about whether that’s a bad practice. This category supersedes all others, meaning, a “How-To” headline with a brand mention goes into the brand category. The actual brands and products in the headlines have been replaced. Here’s an example: [INDUSTRY BRAND].

To determine if a headline qualified to be on the list, we only looked at ones that lead to at least 500 content engagements. However, most were in the thousands to over 100,000 content engagements. Also, the image displayed with the headline likely has an impact on engagement, too. Headlines do not sit in a silo in content amplification.

Headlines and Engagement Rates

These ad unit headlines have a very specific audience. Each one identifies who the article is for – women, police and aviation decision makers. Serving these ad units up to users not identified by each respective headline would have drove the engagement rates down considerably.

The one common thread in this category is the topic. Ad unit headlines here are either about cars or finance. The last headline is similar to the Why Post category in that it identifies who the article is for – investors.

This category of ad unit headlines is all about helping solve peoples’ problems. People only go to the web for two reason – to solve a problem or to be entertained, quickly. Businesses are in the business of solving problems. That’s what they do and why they exist. By leveraging this fact and choosing the right problem to solve these headlines drove significant engagement.

There’s long been a debate in content marketing concerning whether or not including a brand name in a headline helps or hurts with CTRs and engagement. There’re examples that look like it’s a hindrance and examples that look like it helps. The biggest difference between the two is the amount of brand awareness associated with the brand. All of the brands above are well known and popular. The takeaway from this is that headlines should only include a brand name if the brand is a household name.

This isn’t surprising at all. The List Headlines category has long been known to overachieve. It’s human nature to gravitate towards lists. They solve problems and hint at doing so quickly. They also lend themselves to scrolling to look at everything in the list. Which, in-turn, lends itself to 15 seconds or more of engagement.

The catch-all Article Headlines category is difficult to drive macro-conclusions from. The value derived from the list isn’t necessarily from one takeaway, but rather the list itself. Crafting native ad unit headlines similar to any of the above should be a recipe for post-click content engagement, assuming other best practices are followed.

As marketers, we should expect our headlines to drive engagement for our content, not clicks. Click-bate headlines and images in native ad units may get a click, but likely little engagement. Ultimately, these types of headlines usually lead to a poor user experience. This experience can hurt a brand’s image. Use the takeaways highlighted from each category to maximize content engagement post-click. In addition, each one of the 200 native ad unit headlines can serve as a template for crafting headlines that lead to content engagement.