Digital journalism is growing. Particularly when it comes to mobile.
Executives from business magazine Forbes and newspaper The Washington Post discussed why news publications can’t neglect mobile at the Mobile Marketing Summit in New York City yesterday.
Forbes attracts 19 million unique visitors to its mobile website annually, said Ann Marinovich, vice president of advertising products and strategy for Forbes Media speaking in a presentation entitled “How Forbes is Adaption to a Mobile-First Future.” 50% of Forbes’ traffic comes from mobile devices, 40% smartphone and 10% tablet.
Mobile readers visit Forbes on a most often after work hours or during lunch, Marinovich said. Desktop readers tend to visit the site during the business hours. 68% of Forbes’ mobile readers are between the ages of 18-34, she said. Also, mobile consumers are twice as likely to come to the mobile site through a social media channel than desktop readers.
Digital advertising also accounts for most ad sales, Marinovich said. For years, print magazine revenue generated the majority of Forbes’ revenue. Now, 70% of Forbes’ revenue is digital revenue, she said.
A portion of that revenue stream is from Forbes’ “BrandVoice,” which is content on the site that looks like editorial content but is actually advertorial marketing material. 40% of BrandVoice’s 55 million page views come from mobile devices. Forbes recently secured its 100th BrandVoice advertiser, Marinovich said.
Forbes also discussed how it uses specialty apps. For example, Forbes has launched an invite-only app for consumers who make its “30 Under 30” list, which recognizes the top 30 business leaders under the age of 30. The app enables those who have made the list over the years to network with each other, Marinovich said. Forbes has yet to put ads on that app, she said.
The Washington Post also discussed how it has amped up its mobile offerings.
Since Amazon Inc.’s founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million two years ago, the newspaper has hired close to 130 journalists, said Cory Haik, executive director for emerging new products at The Washington Post.
Starting in November 2014, The Washington Post’s app was auto installed on all of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets. The tablet app “publishes” every day at 5 a.m. with 125 pieces of new content. Since the newspaper is owned by Amazon, the app is pushed to the front of a consumer’s carousal of apps every day when it publishes. The newspaper can also change the look of the icon of its app every day to correlate with its top news story.
The tablet app design looks similar to a newspaper broadsheet, in which readers can view a designed page of articles and tap on it to zoom in and read more. The strategy behind this was that there should be a finite amount of content that is easy to navigate, much like a newspaper, Haik said. Also like a newspaper, the reader can flip through headlines, get the gist of the story or choose to read more.
“The same care that goes into the newspaper goes into these products,” Haik said.
Since launching the tablet app in November, page views and session times of articles across all of its digital products have increased 22%, said Julie Beizer, director of mobile products at The Washington Post.
The Washington Post also recently launched an app for iPhone and Android, as well as on the smart watch Android Wear and the Apple Watch. Stories are the same across all devices, but the way they are displayed is optimized for each device.
Smartphone app content is displayed as square tiles that show a headline with an image behind it. Consumers can flip through each tile or click on it and the story page opens in app to read more. The smartphone app updates with new news as it is posted.
“We are not going to do digital on the cheap, we are going to do digital right,” Beizer said.
Amazon also announced yesterday that The Washington Post app is now free for Amazon Prime members on both Android and iOS, for six months. The app usually costs $9.99 per month. Amazon Prime is Amazon’s membership program. Consumers pay $99 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks, such as free streaming of TV shows and movies that Amazon has licensed, and now access to a free Washington Post app.
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