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Mar 17, 2020 - Economy & Business

Coronavirus dwarfs 2020 election content online

Sara Fischer
An illustration of a person in protective gear and a gas mask delivering newspapers.

Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

News around the coronavirus pandemic is creating a huge bump in overall traffic for media publishers.

By the numbers: The explosion in total web traffic is "likely due to the explosion of COVID-19 coverage and attention — as well as the fact that people were checking news/content sites with more frequency in this period," says Andrew Montalenti, Chief Product Officer at Parse.ly.

  • Up to 15% of daily web traffic is to content explicitly mentioning coronavirus, according to data from traffic analytics company Parse.ly.
  • Coronavirus views were 15 times higher than 2020 election content from March 6-12, per Parse.ly's Chief Product Officer Andrew Montalenti.
  • "We've seen overall attention (content views) throughout the Parse.ly network increase in the last few weeks, but especially so in the last several days," says Parse.ly Senior Market Analyst Kelsey Arendt.

Between the lines: Stories around social distancing, flattening the curve and travel restrictions seem to be driving the uptick in traffic.

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