Who were the top publishers on Facebook in July 2019? What content drove the most engagement? We looked at the data to find out.
We’re nearing the end of summer, but we still have time for a couple more publisher rankings before pumpkin spice season gets into full swing. July was a hot month for the top publishers, with some of the highest engagement we’ve seen since adopting our new methodology.
For that methodology, we are using our API to gather these rankings, which you can read about on our developer hub. This analysis includes English-language content from publishers, ranked by Facebook likes, shares, and comments to their web content. Additionally, these rankings do not include media natively uploaded to a Facebook Page, such as a Facebook video.
Some of the highlights from July:
- CNN remained top, and hit the highest engagement number of the year so far in doing so
- HuffPost shot up the rankings to fourth
- The Washington Post finished above the New York Times in terms of engagement for the first time this year
Let’s look at the data.
The top publishers on Facebook in July 2019
As with June, the top two publishers in July were CNN and Fox, and they came out quite significantly ahead of everyone else in the ranking, with each passing 50 million Facebook engagements to their web content. This is the first time any publisher has garnered more than 50 million engagements since our new methodology came into effect last August.
CNN’s success was driven by a variety of stories. The top article for the publisher was about see-saws being installed by artists at the U.S.-Mexico border so that children could play together. This article received some 1.4 million engagements, but CNN also had an article about the USWNT winning the football world cup in July that received more than a million engagements, and the top ten really did contain multitudes. Stories featured everything from articles commemorating the official end of segregation, to the birthday of the USA’s oldest woman, to cockroaches becoming immune to insecticides.
Fox was, as usual, driven mainly by political stories, or culture stories seen through a political lens. Two of the top ten stories for the publisher for July touched in some way on Nike’s decision not to release a shoe whose design was inspired by the original Betsy Ross flag design. Colin Kaepernick, who works with Nike, had been critical of the design and Nike pulled the shoe. This lead to a backlash of criticism toward both Nike and Kaepernick from a number of quarters, and alternative products featuring the design released from other sources, all of which were covered by Fox and highly engaged.
The Daily Mail was third, and as usual contained a variety of content, with its 33 million engagements coming from a diverse range of topics, from President Trump’s immigration policies to the future of 007, to the elimination of HIV in mice for the first time.
Worthy of particular note in this month’s rankings were HuffPost and the Washington Post, which climbed to fourth and fifth in our rankings respectively. Both have been climbing consistently since the start of the year, with the Washington Post having climbed from 17th to 4th over the course of six months by rising a few places every month. This is the first time the Washington Post has ranked above its New York rival since the new methodology.
The top content of July 2019
In terms of the top content of July, only one article broke the two million engagement mark. This came from the Independent, who wrote about paradise gardens being created for honeybees atop bus stops in Utrecht.
The second top article was a follow-up from articles that performed well in June, when Jon Stewart visited Congress to demand justice for those 9/11 first responders who were still suffering illness and injury sustained in the line of duty. The original article where Stewart excoriated Congress for their inaction received some 3.5 million engagements. The continuation of the story, with the Senate passing a bill to protect the first responders for life, received fewer engagements, but still topped out at 1.8 million.
Some cultural highlights and viral stories rounded out the list, though the top stories were quite politics-heavy last month.
The top 25 publishers of July
In the chart below you can find the top publishers on Facebook ranked by their engagements to their web content. Also shown is the total number of articles that each website published on their platform.
LADbible and UNILAD were both fairly low in the top 25, being 22nd and 23rd respectively, but while this was a big fall for LADbible (of 12 places and 4 million engagements), UNILAD had not been in the top 25 in June so this was a win for the viral publisher.
This was probably the most significant change in the rankings from last month beyond the changes in the top ten that we have already highlighted. There were no real newcomers to the top 25 this month, with all recognizable names from previous rankings, just in slightly different positions.
Want to build your own list of the top publishers on Facebook? Take a tour of NewsWhip Analytics.
