Taboola Newsroom data reveals the top news topics of 2021

Taboola (Nasdaq: TBLA), a global leader in powering recommendations for the open web, helping people discover content they may like, released data insights revealing the most read topics by Indian digital readers in 2021.

There are endless headlines from news, entertainment, sports, health & fitness, technology, business, and finance publishers to read on the open web. To explore precisely which topics kept readers enthralled this year and accumulated the most views across Taboola’s network, the company took a deep dive into 2021’s publisher data and insights.

Here are the key statistics for what caught the eye of India during 2021:

Please note: % indicates the percentage of page views out of top topics on Taboola’s network and rounded off

• General:
• With new manifestations of COVID emerging in India comprising 59% of total general news reads
• Other general topics that had reader’s attention were Delhi & Police followed by Bengaluru generating a cumulative readership of 9% and 7% respectively. Parents read up on the amount of COVID cases in Bengaluru as a large number of children tested positive.

• Health & Fitness:
• People widely read about COVID,  the side-effects the pandemic has had on mental and physical health, and vaccine related news. COVID and Vaccination readership was at 47%  of total views followed by content around Bengaluru and COVID at 26%.

• Entertainment:
• Indian actress Kareena Kapoor welcoming her second child this year made up for 32% of views followed by Akshay Kumar & Shah Rukh Khan (19%); and Aryan Khan & Shah Rukh Khan (14%).
• The divorce of South Indian film stars Naga Chaitanya & Samantha Ruth Prabhu comprised 11% views, while that of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan & director Kiran Rao comprised 6% views respectively.
• Indian Idol & Bigg Boss are the only two programmes that have found large views across the network and comprised 13% views respectively as all other views at large were based on personalities.

• Sports:
• India’s undying love for Cricket is well reflected as sports news on World Cup and IPL garnering 46% & 30% of total views on sports.  
• Tokyo Olympics and Hockey garnered 11%.

Data from Taboola Newsroom identifies topics and news categories that have seen an increase in page view traffic for the past eleven months. This data comes from the wide network of news publishers Taboola works within various regions in India. Advertisers looking to raise their brand awareness and increase revenue and traffic can use the Taboola Trends site data to monitor what topics, keywords, and creatives are most effective at any given moment.