5 reasons there’s not enough top quality mobile inventory

Smartphone and tablet web browsing is commonplace, yet many publishers still haven’t made the move to mobile, says Vibrant Media’s Fiona Salmon. Here, she explains why they really cannot afford to miss the boat.

279 years after it was first published, the world’s oldest continuously published newspaper has finally sunk its print edition. “Now [customers] can access us in any coffee shop in the world,” said Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd’s List, when his title, which has been described as ‘the shipping bible’, went digital-only in September.

As the final print edition was published the newspaper only had 25 of its 16,000+ subscribers paying for the hard copy. Although the website for the nearly three centuries old publication isn’t mobile optimised, it still renders legibly from a smartphone screen.

There’s even a Lloyd’s List app. No doubt these prove useful to their users, whether the brokers checking the digital site for shipping news on their commute into work, or perhaps the seafarers using the app to access content when at sea. For a publication from a trade with as extensive a history as shipping, this is all pretty innovative, yet their decision not to develop a mobile-optimised site is curious.

More people are using their smartphones to access the internet, there’s more than half a billion pounds being spent on mobile ads, and early results of a research exercise we’re conducting at Vibrant Media show that cross-platform ad campaigns perform 34 per cent better on mobile optimised sites than on non-mobile optimised sites.

Moreover, Google’s newly updated algorithms will also begin to push non-mobile optimised sites off the top of the search list. The opportunity cost of not having a mobile site is rising.

Lloyd’s List isn’t alone, of course. Vibrant Media’s research department found that 68 per cent of the UK’s largest print publishers still don’t have a mobile site. It’s often said in the industry that there’s an over supply of mobile inventory, but those comments take into account the mass of low quality inventory that’s available through blind buy networks.

Actually there’s an under supply of top quality, truly premium mobile inventory available in which brands can place their adverts. These sites command vastly higher CPMs for publishers than the low end inventory that the industry is awash with – not just because of the quality of the audience and editorial, but because premium mobile inventory is a limited resource.

There’s a clear opportunity for publishers to capitalise on the lack of premium mobile sites, but there seems to be five reasons that some publishers haven’t made the move to mobile yet.

1. Publishers don’t feel the urgency to have a mobile optimised site

Right now, many publishing companies feel they can get by without a mobile site. Lloyd’s List and other titles have so far opted just to use the main desktop site for smaller screens. But non-responsively designed website layouts make the content harder to access on a smartphone, which is irritating for users as they have to fiddle with the content to make it legible.

What’s more, non-responsively designed sites can make consumers click on ads by mistake, which more than half of tablet and smartphone users told Vibrant they did. This delivers an annoying and negative consumer experience, and means that brands paying on a CPC or CPE basis pay more for their campaigns than they should. A bad experience for both consumers and brands will not translate into revenue for publishers.

2. Publishers aren’t yet accessing the money in mobile

Figures from eMarketer show that mobile ad spend in the UK reached £1.2 billion in 2013, but publishers who don’t have mobile optimised websites simply aren’t seeing it. The non-mobile ads on these publishers’ non-optimised sites often render badly on handheld devices – displaying as either big and interruptive, or with creative so small it’s almost invisible.

Consumers simply cannot interact and engage with these online ad units effectively even if they wanted to, hitting the revenue publishers can potentially earn from mobile. There’s a vicious cycle: because publishers aren’t seeing significant additional revenue coming from mobile users, they aren’t investing in mobile sites. Yet until they invest in mobile sites, they won’t be able to see the significant additional revenue coming from mobile users.

Some publishers have broken this cycle by using responsively-designed ad formats on their desktop websites. Such formats, like Vibrant Media’s, display the optimum creative for the consumer’s device – whether mobile phone or tablet – regardless of the content environment. These publishers are seeing notable mobile revenues coming from their desktop sites, and understand the substantial growth in their mobile audience.

3. App distraction

The last major investment many publishers made was in developing iPhone apps. Unfortunately for them, Orange’s 2012-2013 Exposure study reported that less than a third of phones in the UK market are iPhones.

Many publishers have therefore struggled to achieve the market penetration they desired from their app, and the experience prevented them from creating Android apps. Some publishers are still trying to make their app strategy work, but the realisation for the vast majority is that the most important content app on a consumer’s mobile phone is the web browser.

Most users prefer to search online on their smartphone for the information they need, and then move on to their next search. Even if the publisher’s site was clear and helpful they’ll be more likely to still use Google to find the site again rather than download an app.

Insurers and investors might download the Lloyd’s List app as crucial for their work, but casually interested users won’t bother, and so a responsively-designed mobile site will help to increase the number of return visitors. Publishers need to admit that, for casual users, a good mobile site trumps an app.

4. Publisher timidity

Publishers were worried about going online originally because they thought that digital would never be as effective or as lucrative as print. They’d eat their words now. It’s a similar situation with mobile.

Some digital publishers are concerned about making an investment in mobile site development in case they get it wrong and they have to do it all over again. Yet publishers need to get their heads around the idea that mobile web browsing is predicted to surpass desktop web browsing and publishers cannot afford to miss the boat.

5. Brands’ sites are not yet fully mobile

Almost half of the UK’s top 100 brands still don’t have a mobile optimised website, according to IAB UK. Some brands don’t want to deploy mobile ads on publishers’ sites which take them to a site that renders poorly on mobile devices. Until more advertisers develop mobile-friendly sites, and start requiring publishers to run more effective mobile ad campaigns, publishers won’t feel the pressure to go mobile.

However, digital publishers can’t afford to sit around and wait for the mobile revolution to pass them by. Mobile impressions in publisher networks are increasing rapidly. In the third quarter of 2013, Vibrant Media’s mobile impressions were up by 70 per cent on the previous quarter. Now more than a third of Vibrant’s total impressions are delivered on mobile devices.

Of course, much of this success is down to the premium quality of Vibrant’s mobile network. However, the numbers show clearly that publishers who have been slow to react to consumers’ move to mobile are missing out.

To secure the sort of longevity Lloyd’s List has experienced, publishers need to start offering inventory that works effectively for their mobile audience, whether through a responsively designed website or investing in a mobile optimised site.