Someone explained the reasoning behind this at one time and I forgot.
When you go to a news article, the web page will only show the beginning portion of the article. Then there is the ‘Continue Reading’ button. Why is this?
My thought is that if I didn’t want to read the entire article, I wouldn’t have clicked the link. Is this for tracking purposes?
In: Technology
There are two main reasons.
One is that it reduces overhead for both the site and the user. A “Continue Reading” button means that you don’t need to load the entire page any time someone visits it and can wait until someone actually wants to see that content.
The other is tracking/marketing. A “Continue Reading” button is a very effective way of knowing which visitors to the page found it engaging vs people who were just browsing, clicked on the wrong link, etc.
It’s a touch point for the publisher where they’re conveying who owns the content and who’s deciding whether or not it’s free. They’ve got options – 1. Subscription required to access 2. Or limited access, this article 1 of 2 you get for free or 3. they’re simply capturing more data. Ie. Paywall
So they can track how many people actually read the article rather than just clicked on it.
It’s more valuable to advertisers because it shows longer engagement.
The main reason is usually to increase the viewability of ad units by causing dwell whilst the button is viewed, clicked and loads the content.
It is not to measure engagement as others are saying as you just do that with scroll depth, which is more effective and less likely to harm engagement.
Display ads are often only paid when they are deemed viewable. There are a few different measures of this, but Google’s is that at least 50% of the ad unit is view format least 1 second.
Place a read more near that ad unit and your viewability rockets. Sites with high viewability not only get paid for more impressions but also command higher rates.
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