Do Longer Press Releases Get More Attention? An Analysis of 30,000+ Releases
Disclosure Intelligence Series Analysis of 30,000+ press releases distributed January 1–September 30, 2026
How long should a corporate press release be? An analysis of more than 30,000 press releases distributed through TMX Newsfile between January 1 and September 30, 2026, found that longer releases generally attracted more human views within the first 72 hours. AI activity followed a different pattern, with average activity increasing initially before levelling off and declining among the longest releases.
Human Engagement Increased with Release Length
We examined press releases across five word-count categories, ranging from under 400 words to 1,500 words or more, to see how length was associated with human views and AI activity during the first 72 hours. Both average and median human views increased consistently across all five categories.
Releases of 1,500 words or more received 4.2× as many average human views as releases under 400 words. Median human views showed an even greater difference, at 5.3× those of the shortest releases.
Source: TMX Newsfile Disclosure Intelligence | January–September 2026 | 30,000+ releases
The consistent increase in both averages and medians suggests that higher human engagement among longer releases was not driven solely by a few unusually high-performing announcements.
AI Engagement Showed a Different Pattern
AI activity also increased with release length, but averages and medians showed different trends.
Average AI activity more than doubled between releases under 400 words and those containing 700–999 words. It remained relatively unchanged for releases of 1,000–1,499 words before declining among releases of 1,500 words or more.
Median AI activity, on the other hand, continued increasing across all five word-count categories, reaching 2.3× the level recorded for the shortest releases. The increases became smaller as releases grew longer, even as average AI activity levelled off and eventually declined.
Source: TMX Newsfile Disclosure Intelligence | January–September 2026 | 30,000+ releases
The difference between averages and medians is important because a small number of releases with unusually high AI activity can influence the average. The median is less affected by these extremes and provides a useful measure of typical engagement.
This variation is consistent with earlier TMX Newsfile research, Why Some Press Releases Generate 240× More AI Activity Than Others, which examined the substantial differences in AI activity across corporate announcements.
What This Means for Issuer Teams
The analysis shows that longer press releases tend to receive more human views, but it does not establish an ideal word count. Longer releases may attract more attention because they contain more significant corporate news or detailed information, not simply because they have more words.
These findings also build on TMX Newsfile's earlier Disclosure Intelligence research, What Drives AI Visibility? 21,000+ Releases Challenge Common Claims, which examined how multiple factors contribute to AI visibility and challenged the idea that a single optimization technique can reliably improve results.
Ultimately, the objective is not to reach a particular word count, but to communicate material information clearly, accurately and with enough context to serve both human and machine audiences.
About the Analysis
TMX Newsfile analyzed more than 30,000 press releases distributed between January 1 and September 30, 2026, grouping them into five word-count categories and measuring human views and AI activity during the first 72 hours. Nearly 83% of releases contained fewer than 700 words, while approximately 7% contained 1,000 words or more.
