CASE STUDY: MINDSET MAPPING OF AN ONLINE AUDIENCE AT TheGrio.

com
TheGrio.com is a news and entertainment portal owned by
NBCUniversal. TheGrio was developed as the first video-centric news
site dedicated to providing an African American audience with stories
and perspectives that appeal to their demographic but are
underrepresented in national news outlets.
The Challenge
TheGrio editors were interested in three primary goals: i) gaining a better understanding the
political orientations of its online audience; ii) compiling user-centric data to enhance content
and marketing opportunities; and iii) learning more about audience based site usage and
design. Traditional audience analytics tools already in use were limited by their inability to
understand the reader beyond demographic attributes. By mapping individual audience
member mindsets TheGrio editors aimed to develop a more customer-centric content strategy
that could: engage readers longer; match readers with more relevant content; allocate
marketing resources more efficiently; and identify new 3rd party advertising partnerships.

The Discourse Analytics Solution:

The DA Consumer Activation Platform (CAP) provides an unparalleled understanding of the
behavioral dimensions of individuals and clusters within an audience. Unlike other audience
analytics solutions that the CAP collects unique fingerprint type data on the readers that
identifies the causal and predictive attitudinal drivers that connect each reader with the digital
property. Through its proprietary survey tool and content consumption API Discourse Analytics
breaks down existing reader data according to specific and activating triggers to provide
smarter and more actionable data.
TheGrio installed the CAP survey tool on its website and invited readers
to participate in a series of engaging and topical questions focusing on
four key issue areas: Education, Healthcare, Energy and the
Constitution. Every morning the widget displayed a question about a
topical issue or trending content directly from TheGrio website. By
soliciting feedback on timely issues such as a breaking headline or
popular pop culture reference we encouraged high levels of
participation. Once users answered the first handshake question, they
frequently answered at least several more questions.
Over a 12-month period the widget received over 1.5 million impressions and 238,000
responses from 137,000 unique readers. 20% of readers answered more than one question in a

1140 19th St. NW Suite 610 Washington DC 20036 | 202-505-1043 | info@discourseanalytics.com

session and 4% of users responded to questions on multiple visits to the site. Using the simple
interaction of a survey widget DA built highly detailed profile of interests and preferences at an
individual level for a large percentage of TheGrio audience. These profiles enabled editors to
optimize engagement through highly actionable market research the delivery of personalized
content, improved editorial direction, the creation of more cohesive online communities and
drive revenue via presentation of more relevant marketing content and offers.
RESULTS
Thinking Differently
The Grio editors built the site with a predisposition towards targeting the Grio readers as
liberal leaning African Americans. The CAP demonstrated that the mindsets did not match
the demographic target. While 39% of readers could be characterized as traditionally liberal
the majority of the readers were clustered with conservative views on healthcare or on the
Constitution with a large cohort of moderates.

Figure 1. Attitudinal clusters of Grio readers

Who is here?
Protracted deployments with regular
and routine engagements can yield
unique and powerful understandings
about what drives the audience on a
personal level. However, cookies
alone cannot build personalized
profiles of audience members. The
CAP engagement widget creates an
opportunity for a continuous two way
conversation with readers that can
capture detailed insights about
audience interests and drivers.
Weekends revealed themselves to be a useful entry point into the psyche of the audience as
readers were more likely to engage in off message or lighter topics than the traditional
weekly topics and also showed an increase in likelihood of multiple responses per session.
One exciting finding came in the form of a question tied to your favorite music. By linking
the response of Country Music to other prior responses DA discovered that 7% of the
audience fit the NASCAR, Budweiser, Pick-up truck, jean-wearing profile. This cluster was in
favor of legalizing marijuana and was comprised of men, over the age of 45 but fell outside of
the stereotypical profile on consumer choices and politics. In Figure 2 we show that this
subset of the population was broadly conservative and evidenced an undiscovered material
block who could be served with unique content, expanded editorial coverage or atypical
advertising.

1140 19th St. NW Suite 610 Washington DC 20036 | 202-505-1043 | info@discourseanalytics.com

Figure 2. Poll of the day results: What is your favorite music genre?

Comparing Audience Segments by Time of Day

Not surprisingly the main part of the audience engaged with site content in two large blocks of
time Weekdays between 10 am-4 pm (52%) and weekdays between 6 pm- 9pm (27%). We call
these two groups Workday and Second Screen respectively. We expected some variation
in the attitudes of these two groups, but as seen in Figure 3 below, the differences are
sometimes quite stark.

Figure 3. Time of day differentiation

Workday interactions
Responses 9AM-5PM
More likely to believe that both
race and gender should be
considered in university admission
decisions

Second screen TV viewers

Responses 6PM-11PM
More likely to believe that neither
race nor gender should be
considered in university admission
decisions

Marriage equality

More likely to believe that gay

marriage is a civil rights issue

Less likely to believe that gay

marriage is a civil rights issue

Preferred type of

Prefer gas powered cars

Twice as likely to drive

College admissionaffirmative action

1140 19th St. NW Suite 610 Washington DC 20036 | 202-505-1043 | info@discourseanalytics.com

car

electric/hybrid cars

Dynamic profiling
One of the key advantages of the CAP is the ability to track changes in attitudinal profile over
time. Figure 4 shows that throughout the 12-month period of analysis the CAP detected shifts
in audience sentiment around the Healthcare issue that can be tied back to current events like
the government shutdown and the botched launch of Healthcare.gov. Early in the test period
the audience was very liberal leaning in its views on healthcare but twelve months later the
audience had shifted to being slightly conservative on healthcare. Sentiment shifts (much like
interest) became easily tracked and predicted.
Figure 4. Visualization of changing political attitudes

CONCLUSION
By moving beyond stereotypes, demographic segments and perceived psychographics
companies can truly understand the audience interests and preferences at a granular level to
optimize and monetize via content, product offers and advertising. The data enable editors
and business managers to elevate from just scaled conversations and engagement to the
ultimate personalized engagement and activation.
In this case we demonstrated to the TheGrio editors the ability to create a detailed picture of
the attitudinal interest and preferences of its online audience using simple, small interactions
with readers. By identifying the individual preferences drivers TheGrio can take informed steps
to optimize and personalize its relationship with its readers, enhance advertising offerings and
provide a more engaging user experience.

1140 19th St. NW Suite 610 Washington DC 20036 | 202-505-1043 | info@discourseanalytics.com