Emerging Technology in Advertising, Mobile Apps, Mobile Optimisation, Product Management
What gets better traction for publishers? Mobile Web or Apps?
A study from eMarketer notes that adverts on mobile web gets considerably more click throughs than adverts displayed via mobile apps. It’s a fairly significant difference, with 35% on mobile web, and 26% on mobile apps. So what does that mean for publishers who run an advertising model? Likely that it’s time to pursue a two pronged strategy similar to the one that the New York Times has been attempting.
Give those customers who are new and find you via search, Facebook and other social channels access on the mobile web with ads and native sponsored content and focus the effort on developing apps which are single purpose and not free to download – similar to the New York Times Now app which is $6 per month and gives users a summarized version of the top stories from NYT.
These apps should be directed towards your loyal customers, who are coming to you because of the types of content you provide and the brand recognition you have built up. Key to this strategy is remembering the different use cases that your customers have on mobile, and then the difference use case between mobile web (often a push scenario which is more transient) and apps (a pull scenario which is more consistent). Monitor your results, and in true agile style – inspect and adapt.
