Case Study: USA Today achieves major fan engagement and higher page views with Ion Interactive

USA Today Ups its Game on Fan Engagement

USA Today, a national newspaper founded in 1982 with a daily distribution of over one million, sought to deepen its sports coverage by turning passive readers into active participants. The sports team wanted to go beyond traditional reporting to foster real-time Q&A and back-and-forth conversations with fans around major events like NCAA and NFL games.

To do that, USA Today adopted Rock Content Engage to blend reporter updates with user-generated content in a live feed that supports text, images, video and an up-to-date scoreboard, enabling reporters to interact directly with fans. The platform drove strong results—over 100,000 page views in a 24-hour span during the 2017 NFL Draft (more than one million engagement minutes), 40,000–70,000 page views on typical Packers game days, and average time on page rising to about 15 minutes—while also powering playful fan features that humanize reporters and boost repeat visits.

USA Today

Mike Davis

Deputy Managing Editor for Sports at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel