To help me in editing the Online Publishing Update,* my RSS reader is filled with subscriptions to feeds from eMarketer, Mobile Insider, comScore, Nielsen and a boatload of other trend-tracking sources. One common thread: Mobile revenue is going up.
Mobile is not the magic (or silver) bullet for the current general downturn in revenue at newspaper companies, but it’s an important part of the revenue picture.
Think of it in personal finance terms: Smart investors know it’s important to have a diverse range of investments. For newspapers, mobile is a great way to diversify, and this investment will definitely pay off in the long term.
With that in mind, I wanted to give you the Cliffs Notes version of the revenue article from our latest development and growth guide, Moving to Mobile. The entire article – plus information on mobile local search and more – is available at www.naa.org/mobile.
Here are a few takeaways:
Mobile advertising, frankly, is in an awkward spot right now. Advertisers know that mobile is going to be an important part of the advertising mix, but statistically solid ways to measure mobile advertising effectiveness just don’t exist (yet).
In addition, consumers are mostly still wary of getting ads on their mobile phone (especially because many people pay for each text message they receive. But the theoretical usefulness of mobile geotargeted ads can’t be denied.
At first glance, migrating advertising to the mobile platform looks easy – just plot a newspaper’s banner ad on the newspaper’s mobile site, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Here are some considerations: screen resolution, file size, processor speed, the phone’s OS (Windows, Palm, etc.), functionality… the list goes on.
Fortunately, 91 percent of the handsets fall into four very simple, standard display widths. And the Mobile Marketing Association has some great resources to help navigate those.
Other mobile advertising options include CSCs (common short codes), which are related to text-messaging; QR (quick response) codes – a.k.a. 2-D barcodes – which allow camera-phone owners to take a photo of a code that brings them to a Web site; coupons; image-recognition ads; classified ad models that incorporate any or all of the above options; social-mobile ads and video.
We’ve got information and advice on all these formats and more in the revenue section of Moving to Mobile. Click here.
* The Online Publishing Update is a thrice-weekly e-mail newsletter that is available with Digital Media Federation membership. To learn more about the federation, click here.