1 Comment

Mobile Content & Social News Organizations (part 4)

May 6, 2010
by

The last installment in our series on Social News Organizations (SNOs) explored how news publishers could leverage social media APIs. Specifically, we considered how such APIs could reduce registration barriers, increase user retention, be used to acquire additional users, and access user data that publishers could use to better target advertising.

Today, we examine how mobile web is also a priority distribution and acquisition channel for SNOs. Through mobile content apps, SNOs are able to  reach some of the most engaged and voracious consumers of news,  increase reader retention,  enhance their ad offerings, and offer advertisers added confidence through enhanced ad targeting.

The Mobile News Consumer

The opportunity for news content producers to engage/retain readers and bolster ad revenues through mobile channels is considerable. As the Pew Internet & American Life Project found, “[one] quarter (26 percent) of all Americans say they get some form of news via cell phone today – that amounts to 33 percent of cell phone owners.” The same study also found that the range of content being consumed via mobile devices is diverse:

  • 72 percent check weather reports on their cell
  • 68 percent get news and current events information on their cell
  • 49 percent have downloaded an application that allows them to access news, weather, sports, or other information on their cell
  • 44 percent check sports scores and related information on their cell
  • 35 percent check traffic information on their cell
  • 32 percent get financial information or updates
  • 31 percent get news alerts sent by text or email to their phones
  • 88 percent say yes to at least one of the above

This breed of mobile news consumer is also likely to interact with SNO content in a way that attracts new users and boosts advertising opportunities. As the Pew Internet & American Life Project also found “in addition to seeking out advanced features in their news sites, [mobile news] consumers are also especially likely to contribute material or actively share it with others. Almost half of [mobile news] consumers (46 percent) [...] engage in one of the following activities:

  • Tagging or categorizing online news content
  • Contributing their own article, opinion piece, picture or video to an online news site
  • Commenting on a news story or blog they read online
  • Posting a link to a news story or blog on a social networking site
  • Using Twitter to post or re-tweet a news story or blog

So as well as representing a highly-engaged user-base, mobile news consumers also refer additional readers to SNO content. This makes the mobile web integral to retaining, acquiring, and monetizing an SNOs user-base.

Mobile News Apps & Social News Organizations

When it comes to engaging mobile users, SNOs rely much more on mobile apps than WAP portals to engage and retain mobile users. Mobile apps allow users to access custom content in a convenient format. In addition to offering apps that features the latest headlines, SNOs can also offer apps for each of their content verticals — e.g. headlines, sports, weather, etc.

Mobile apps allow SNOs to reach half of US mobile news consumers. As the Pew Internet & American Life Project found, 48 percent of mobile news consumers have “downloaded an application that allows them to access news, weather, sports, or other information on their cell.”

Mobile apps also allow SNOs to engage users on a consistent basis. In an interview in February of 2010, Dave Coleman of Spreed, a company that builds mobile content apps, reported that the Globe and Mail was already serving 7.5 million views per month through its iPhone apps alone.

User engagement with the Globe and Mail mobile news apps, moreover, was similarly high. Coleman has since indicated that, on average, users open their apps 2 times a day, 4-5 days a week, and read an average of 4 articles per session. That’s a total of 8-10 articles per users per day.

This level of engagement helps the Globe and Mail bolster its ad revenues in two ways: overall ad impressions are increased by an addition 7.5 million views per month, and the Globe is able to better substantiate the precision and loyalty of its user base.

Mobile Data & Ad Targeting

Mobile app users also provide an additional level of personal data that can be used for content targeting: geo-location. This kind of data can be used to both recommend additional content to users and better target advertising.

In fact, many retailers already target time-sensitive mobile offers according location. And some news organizations are already using geo-location to target content.

The Canadian free daily newspaper franchise, Metro, for instance, has already established a partnership with the mobile social app, FourSquare, to deliver restaurant reviews based on a FourSquare user’s location:

As part of the partnership, Metro has created a robust Foursquare presence that includes restaurant reviews, city tips, to-dos and even articles that mobile app users can stumble upon as they traverse Canadian points of interest. Metro readers and tourists alike can think of the editorial content inside Foursquare as a travel guide book that highlights useful articles and unlocks the best a neighborhood has to offer.

The Metro news organization, then, has effectively leveraged both social media and the mobile web to grow its audience. As mobile users consume Metro content, Metro gains access to geo-location data, allowing them to geo-target additional content and the advertising alongside that content.

Mobile News Content

On an intuitive level, mobile content apps seem to be the most refined format of news delivery: users carry their mobile with them everywhere they go and can receive instant alerts and updates while the news is still “new.”

It’s not surprising, then, that mobile apps also offer news organizations a number of other business benefits. Mobile apps help SNOs keep the most active news consumers engaged. Mobile content apps increase both page views (user engagement) and ad impressions (revenue). Finally, mobile apps offer an additional level of data (geo-location) that SNOs can use to offer advertisers time sensitive and location-based media buys.

In a word, publishers in general and news organizations in particular cannot ignore the opportunity that mobile apps offer. They promise to be one of the primary distribution channels of the very near future and, therefore, a primary source of revenue.

Read the Series:

About CT Moore

A Staff Editor here at Revenews.com, CT Moore has over 5 years experience leveraging search and social media to help brands meet their business goals online. By day, he provides SEO and social content strategy to both SMBs and enterprise level companies. CT is also an accomplished blogger, podcaster, and conference speaker who educates groups and companies about how they can leverage digital media. You can find CT on Twitter @gypsybandito.

Twitter: gypsybandito
Filed under: Mobile - Commerce, Apps, Ads, Security + Online Publishing + Social Media
  • jinglebells

    This article hits it on the head. The web is getting more mobile everyday, but the people that use social news sites are even more likely to be mobile. They are the tech forerunners. It isn’t just about writing an iPhone app although that is important. Notice that sites such as digg.com, reddit and slashdot already have a clean interface that can be accessed on the iphone and ipad even without an app. The key is having a clean interface that will display well on a mobile interface.