• by Sara Guaglione , January 25, 2019

Parse.ly, an analytics and content optimization platform for digital publishers, has added a “content demand” feature to its Currents internet attention-measuring platform. It allows publishers to see a gap in the market between what topics audiences are reading and a lack of articles on those topics.

Currents was launched last fall to give publishers the ability to measures how audiences spend time consuming content online.

The platform also shows how editorial topics are performing across Parse.ly’s network of 3,000 news sites.

Rather than tracking search trends, it measures how different topics, moments, contexts, locations, devices and sources interact with each other in real-time.

It is a data set to determine the top-performing stories and topics around the world.

Currents does this for a global audience of 1 billion, across 1 million news stories daily, according to Parse.ly.

The new content demand feature lets Currents users dive deeper. Users can see which article categories and topics have high network audience “demand” (views per article), compared to the network “supply” of article coverage (the number of articles that cover that topic).

The feature reveals to publishers what topics audiences are flocking to that lack adequate articles.

For example, in the Health & Fitness category on the Parse.ly platform, the “abortion rights movements” is in high demand, as is “Roe v. Wade,” as of Friday afternoon.

In the Business category, articles on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are in high demand.

Parse.ly says audiences see many of the same stories from different publishers on a variety of platforms, especially from ad-driven media companies that need traffic for revenue. 

But the new feature gives publishers the opportunity to see what stories they are missing that their audience craves.