Mumbai: Taboola, a front-runner in powering recommendations for the open web, today released the readership insights for the month of April, 2022. These insights from Taboola’s Newsroom revealed the topics of interest of Indian readers that gauged their attention. Over the last month, a huge surge in the page view traffic on specific subject-focused articles showcased a tremendous shift in the reading interest of the population, increasing their awareness of the ongoing pandemic and keeping themselves entertained.
Here are some of the key insights revealed from the readership trends released:
The threat of new Covid Wave
The rising cases of coronavirus in the subcontinent alerted the readers as Taboola Newsroom saw a 65 percent surge in readership to 23 million pageviews peaking in mid-April. As Delhi and NCR region reported maximum cases, article headlines mentioning Delhi and COVID also peaked by 137 percent.
India’s love for cricket
Nothing causes a stronger buzz in India as much as cricket does. The new season of IPL caused an 877 percent surge in the readership by drawing a traffic of 14 million pageviews over the last 45 days. As people searched to gather updates about their favourite teams and players, Chennai Super Kings gained a lot of traffic during the season since the start of March while Gujarat Titans and Punjab Kings saw a surge from mid-April.
Celebrating celebrity unions
The celebrity wedding of Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor caused much anticipation in the country. According to Taboola Newsroom, Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor drove 24 million (350 percent) and 15 million (1,831 percent) pageviews since early April, respectively. The couple tied the knot on 14 April 2022 and continue to drive readership in the entertainment segment as the country is geared up to know more about the newlyweds.
Data from Taboola Newsroom identifies topics and news categories, which have seen an increase in pageview traffic for the past 53 days. This data comes from the wide network of Indian news publishers Taboola works with. Taboola’s news publisher partners have access to data on trending topics in the Topic Insights part of Taboola Newsroom, a real-time audience analytics platform.
