Audience Metrics and News Decisions

Digital media are constantly trying to provide attractive and useful content to their users. They have to do it with caution, in order to respect the identity of the publications and their business strategy. This implies constant editorial decision-making. To support these critical decisions, the most widespread tools today, those that allow a better analysis of audiences, are digital metrics. The metrics provide key performance indicators, generally named as KPIs, chosen according to the type of data required: quantitative or qualitative. Based on a qualitative study through questionnaires and interviews with journalists from seven native digital media in Latin America, this chapter analyzes to what extent and with what effects are metrics being used by digital media in this region to make strategic decisions. The results indicate that the adoption of metrics as criteria to guide the supply of news is still moderate in the region. However, a growing incidence of these analytical systems in newswork is detected, at least among digital native media.