Experimentation and evolution in the ABC listener app with Alex Jarvie, Product Manager, ABC Listen & ABC Kids, Australia focused on a public broadcasters app. The ABC app has 60 stations, 170 podcasts, under 50 news briefings and 25 music programmes. About four years ago it was a radio app and a very different experience. A lot of on demand experiments were done. ABC creates more than radio at ABC and wanted to make sure they were innovating. Alex showed the metrics of on demand and live listening and explained why it was important to track these. He said at a very basic level the app curates content, this helps with the move from live and on demand. They also try collections, one area is important and that is quality – Binge on the best! About a quarter of the home page runs on an algorithm that tracks what is popular. This shows which episodes are becoming popular and the team can create cool pop ups and collections. The trending module is the highest converting module on the home page. In the future they want to curate on taste history and personalization. News briefings are a big part of the app – 5 min news bulletin updated hourly, this is the most popular on demand on the app. Expansion has come out of this into local and topical news briefings. Next this is going to expend into a continuous stream of news audio. Rights limited music programmes have been added to the app. Mood based playlists are really doing well on the app. User generated content & deeper in the car experience – how do you keep listening going getting in and out of the car. The takeaways were habit should be encouraged, cross pollination works, basic algorithms work, short form news is popular and mood base music works!
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