As last week’s election night unfolded, every state projection was tracked and reported before being beamed to our devices via push notification.
Mobile growth company Urban Airship reported a record breaking 24 hours surrounding Election Day. It delivered 2.5 billion push notifications—its highest daily volume ever.
“News notifications hold a special place in our heart as there’s no clearer demonstration of how critical speed and reliability are as news even minutes old is old news and immediately recognized as such by hundreds of millions of people,” says Urban Airship’s CEO Brett Caine.
“As more businesses harness mobile to re-imagine marketing as real-time customer service, our unparalleled ability to spark in-the-moment experiences at exactly the right time is a tremendous and unmatched advantage.”
The company powers more than 45,000 apps across every industry vertical, subsequent data analysis shows that more than 400 media apps were responsible for 60% of this record volume, sending 1.5 billion push notifications in a single day as election results were announced.
The U.S. Presidential Elections are not the first time media apps contributed to new daily records in push notification volumes. Urban Airship first surpassed one billion notifications delivered in a single day this year on March 1, where media apps accounted for more than 200 million notifications centered on Super Tuesday and astronaut Scott Kelly’s return to Earth. In addition, results of the EU Referendum vote saw media apps send more than 530 million push notifications in a single day.
Urban Airship’s notification volume now exceeds more than one billion per day on average. In the past year, average notification opt-in rates for media apps have also increased from 41 percent to 43 percent, demonstrating growing if not consistent consumer receptivity.
“We spend a lot of time at Breaking News thinking about the speed, relevancy and accuracy of news in the mobile age,” said Cory Bergman, co-founder and GM, Breaking News (an NBC News Company). “From our team to our technology, we take great pride in being first to alert readers of news that’s important to them by both topic and proximity” Urban Airship is a trusted partner in helping us deliver on that promise.”
With Urban Airship’s ability to send notifications through mobile wallet passes, its new support for web notifications and Apple News notifications, and its open channels capability to send notifications to any platform, device or marketing channel, the company anticipates these massive volume gains will grow exponentially.
