Study: Major publishers failing to optimise for mobile
Despite the £2.26 billion expected to be spent on mobile advertising this year, 45% of the most popular print media publications in the UK do not have a digital site that displays effectively on handheld devices, according to Vibrant Media.
Research from the second annual Mobile Advertising Readiness Survey reveals that while consumers can access content from 55% of the UK’s largest print media titles on their mobile phones, the industry is still proving slow to adapt, with just one in five launching a new site that renders effectively on mobile screens in the last year.
The research found that over the last year, General Monthly magazines – primarily covering the men’s sectors and specialist interests – have adopted mobile sites most quickly of all the categories, with 25% of these titles creating a new mobile optimised digital site in the last year.
The General Weekly category, which includes TV, radio and entertainment, saw almost one in five of its media titles adopt a mobile site in the last year, taking its number of mobile optimised sites to 50%.
On the contrary, Women’s Weekly magazines were found to be the slowest to move to mobile, with just over 22% of titles in 2013 having a mobile optimised website.
However, 54% of Women’s Monthlies have websites that work effectively on mobile, and eight out of ten daily news media titles are currently successfully mobile optimised.
Total Publishers: 2013 68.0% | 2014 45.0% | Percentage increase 23.0%
Daily News: 2013 40.0% | 2014 20.0% | Percentage increase 20.0%
General Weekly: 2013 69.2% | 2014 50.0% | Percentage increase 19.2%
General Monthly: 2013 73% | 2014 48.9% | Percentage increase 24.1%
Women’s Weekly: 2013 77.6% | 2014 60.7% | Percentage increase 16.9%
Women’s Monthly: 2013 62.5% | 2014 46.4% | Percentage increase 16.1%
Fiona Salmon, publishing solutions director at Vibrant Media, said: “There are three primary motivations for publishers to adopt a mobile site. Firstly, the revenue potential: publishers are seeing more traffic to their digital presences from handheld devices, but without an effective site or mobile responsive ad formats, they’re missing out on the revenue.
“Secondly, fear of Google’s algorithm changes: it’s predicted that Google will punish publishers in search engine results if their sites don’t perform on mobiles.
“Finally, consumer perception: publishers without a site that displays effectively on mobiles just frustrate consumers, who expect a good mobile experience. That impacts how the consumer feels about the media title’s entire brand, impacting the perception of the print and desktop experience too.”
According to the latest forecasts from the Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report, UK adspend reached £17,877 million in 2013, up 3.9% on the previous year with mobile advertising up 95%.
Magazines fell 5.7% in 2013, with print at -9.2% and digital growing 7.1%. Growth in digital ad spend is expected to offset the decline in print by 2015 with an overall growth rate of 0.6% forecast.
“The publishers still relying on websites developed for desktop users to serve their mobile consumers are costing themselves money as well as their relationship with their consumers,” added Salmon.
“Desktop-focused websites often render so badly on handheld screens they can make the ads redundant. Serving ineffective ads on mobile devices limits publishers’ opportunity to earn revenue to support editorial.”
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