UPDATED 00:47 EDT / DECEMBER 09 2015

NEWS

Apple News app adds curated ‘Top Stories’, traffic insight for publishers

With the launch of iOS 9.2 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch on Tuesday there has been a variety of bug fixes and improvements for Apple Music. In addition to these changes, Apple has also made some changes to its recently launched News app for both users and content publishers.

When the News app launched its focus was on providing news stories based on what you like and what the app learns from your reading behavior to provide you with content that is more relevant.

With the latest update to the News app, this will still happen, but Apple will now also curate a list of stories that it feels everyone should be aware of and will display them a couple of times a day in your News app. According to Re/code, the Top Stories, curated by Apple Editors, will be limited to mainstream publishers, like CNN, Bloomberg and the New York Times.

The new Top Stories feature will be available in all the places that the News app is available, i.e. the U.S. the U.K. and Australia.

The other update to the News app affects the publishers who agree to let Apple run their content on the News app rather than the actual users. The deal terms with Apple allow publishers to benefit nicely from ad revenue. They are able to keep 100 percent of the revenue from ads they sell on their own while they get 70 percent of revenue from ads that Apple sells on behalf of publishers.

According to Re/code, Apple will now be incorporating ComScore technology into the News app. The web traffic counter will ensure that if a publisher’s content is generating views, they are receiving their due in terms of advertiser credit. The fact that incorporation of ComScore into the app did not happen before is one of the main gripes that the publishers have had with the News app.

Publishers are likely to benefit greatly from the inclusion of the technology to gain insight into the performance of their content on the News app, as well as for publishers who want to sells ads on the app.

Image credit: Apple

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