What were the topics that resonated most with our audience? We delve into the data of 2023 to find out
Every December, the Investment Innovation Institute [i3] compiles a list of that year’s top stories. It helps keeping a finger on the pulse in terms of topics of interest to our readers and the broader industry.
Most years, there are few surprises. Asset owner stories make up the bulk of the top 5 of most read stories, while typical strategy, asset allocation and CIO interviews demand top rankings.
Not this year.
In fact, the most-read story of 2023 wasn’t published in 2023 at all. It was an interview with Liza McDonald, Head of Responsible Investment at Aware Super, about climate change and the fact that this isn’t just relevant to the ‘E’ in ESG, but that it is a social issue too.
The article was published in March of 2022 and was read almost twice as much as the second ranking story of 2023 (which indeed was published this year).
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Top 5 of Most-read Stories of 2023
- Climate Change is a Social Issue too
- Economist Blasts Climate Risk Assessment
- Aware Super Secures Landmark DB Deal
- AustralianSuper merges Infra and Property Teams
- ART elevates advice to executive level
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Even more interesting is that the second most-read article also deals with climate change and doesn’t even feature an asset owner, but an economist of all people.
Don’t get me wrong, Steve Keen is a great economist and a very interesting person to interview, but generally speaking economists’ comments don’t make it into the top 5.
It leads us to conclude that the interest in climate change and its impact on the broader economy and individual investments has quickly gained in importance among asset owners and fund managers.
In line with this trend, we have seen the theme of energy transition rapidly developing as one of the most talked about topics of 2023, perhaps due to the more tangible nature of the transition and the familiarity with investing in infrastructure assets, compared to the society engulfing implications of climate change as a whole.
Podcasts
The ranking of podcasts is trickier, as there were only 14 podcast episodes this year and those that were published earlier in the year had more time to amass listeners. Unlike with articles, podcasts also behave more like evergreen content and when someone listens to one episode they often go back to the archive to see what other episodes are there. This is not always the case with articles, where people tend to read them and move on.
Having said that, the clear winner this year is the interview with TCorp’s Tanya Branwhite, which attracted well over the average number of listeners per episode. Branwhite went into the way TCorp applies its total portfolio approach to its various client portfolios and shared some fascinating war stories from her time with Macquarie.
Here is the full top 5:
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Top 5 Podcasts for 2023
- Ep 81: Tanya Branwhite of TCorp
- Ep 82: ChatGPT, Machine Learning and VC
- Ep 89: Michael Kollo on Artificial Intelligence
- Ep 79: Dr Warren McKenzie on Nuclear Fusion
- Ep 80: Sean Anthonisz on academia, quant and loose graphs
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Here, we also see a theme arising. Podcast listeners are mostly interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Two of the top five podcasts covered this area, although to be fair we didn’t have a podcast solely dedicated to climate change and so we don’t know if this topic, which was the most popular one among our written content, would have trumped AI. Maybe one to remember for next year.
Overall, we had almost 21,000 listeners tune into our episodes in 2023. A great result for all the interviewees that took the time to speak with us, while I can only apologise for the time our listeners had to cope with the sound of my voice.
If you have any suggestions for topics, please feel free to reach out to us at: [email protected]
Kind regards,
Wouter
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[i3] Insights is the official educational bulletin of the Investment Innovation Institute [i3]. It covers major trends and innovations in institutional investing, providing independent and thought-provoking content about pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds across the globe.