Buyers say Fox News’ homepage redesign to highlight more non-hard news coverage is a ‘smart’ move

By Sara Guaglione

Fox News unveiled a redesign of its website yesterday to highlight more non-hard news and politics coverage to its audience coming to the homepage and provide more “brand safe” content to advertisers, said Porter Berry, vp and editor-in-chief of Fox News Digital.

Three advertising agency executives who spoke with Digiday said these changes have the potential to draw in new advertisers and budgets. They declined to share if their clients were currently advertising on Fox News’ sites.

“Anytime a publisher is taking a moment to think about what is going to be the best way for consumers to experience their brand is a smart moment in time,” said Megan Jones, Digitas’ chief media officer.

It’s the first redesign of the Fox News site since 2017, according to executive vp of product and engineering John Fiedler. Since then, Fox News has expanded its crime, sports, lifestyle and entertainment coverage and launched Fox Nation, Fox News Books and its ad-supported streaming service Fox Weather.

Page views increased by double-digit percentages year over year for Fox News’ sports, lifestyle, world and auto content, according to the company. Lifestyle, auto, world and media content saw double-digit percent increases in minutes spent year over year. Fox News declined to share raw numbers.

What’s changing

The homepage now is made up of two main columns instead of three. Images and headlines are larger. A new tool — which took the product team about a year to build — allows the editorial team to create and move modules on the homepage, Fiedler said. The homepage can display live blogs and create carousels of stories on a topic. The homepage also now has special breakout sections with kicker tabs on crime, pop culture and lifestyle stories. Nearly half of Fox News Digital’s readership comes through the homepage, Fiedler said.

Joshua Teixeira, svp and head of experience design at Digitas, said cleaning up the Fox News homepage improves the experience on a mobile device, where most people are reading the news these days. And a cleaner experience on the site means less clutter, making the ad placements “feel more natural.”

“We have the editorial flexibility to highlight things in ways that we couldn’t before to showcase the journalism that we’re doing across verticals,” Berry said. He gave the example of the “Meet the American Who…” franchise, which spotlights people in history who invented things like light beer, buffalo wings and stoplights.

A new section dedicated to video lives in the right-hand column, which surfaces Fox News’ live channels: Fox Business, Fox Weather, Fox Nation and Fox News. It now shows which channels are free to watch and which require a paid subscription to access.

Ads load 30-50% faster compared to the previous version of the site, Fiedler said. Ads on Fox News’ site are sold both through programmatic and direct channels. The same amount of inventory is available on the redesigned site. Fox News declined to share advertising revenue figures.