With thanks to: Mobyaffiliates

It has been some time since I first remember trying to sign The Guardian to the YOC media network, sometime in 2009. From memory at the time, 4th Screen were selling around 1 million page views per month. I have posted below the latest figures from their site**, that figure now stands at 6.2 million and generates more unique browsers and monthly page views than their iOS, Android and iOS tablet apps combined. These figures are somewhat surprising but not because their mobile internet has the biggest pull, rather that their mobile traffic has only 6 fold in 4 or so years and all their mobile channels are not generating significant page impressions.
I have always been an advocate for mobile internet and I do get and understand that having an app strategy for print and digital publishers makes perfect sense. After all, I have personally been involved in building so many for clients as such, why wouldn’t I think this. My bigger question is why is their mobile internet site and apps not generating higher levels of uniques or monthly page impressions? We know they have an award winning app and their paid for model seemed to work and made them a small profit after development costs.
But… why is their mobile internet site generating far less monthly page impressions in ratio to their applications? And… are their applications generating enough impressions in ratio to the unique users?
Generating 6.2 million page impressions from 2.5 million unique browsers can be averaged out that for every one customer visiting the site once a month is only generating 2.5 page impressions per visit. I am guessing that their customers are visiting more than once a month which would mean they are generating even less impressions per visit (just divide the impression number by the number of visits). As you can see from these states it becomes somewhat disappointing and raises some concern. Maybe I am interpreting unique browsers wrongly as unique users, but it sounds like the same thing to me.
Again applying the same principle generating 1 million page impressions from 34,000 uniques can be averaged out that for every 1 customer using the app once a month is generating about 30 impressions per visit. Like their mobile internet users the reality is they are visiting more than once a month and therefore the impressions they generate per visit are even less.
Lets look at the rest, again applying the same methodology…
45,113 monthly uniques generating 3.45 million page impressions equates to 1 customer visiting once a month generating 75 page impressions per visit.
11,000 monthly uniques are generating 1.2 million page impressions equates to 1 customer visiting once a month generating 110 page impressions per visit.
In summary, it shows that their Android app is generating a much richer experience than their other channels. Or maybe Android users are just more engaged than iOS users. We have to be careful here as their mobile internet site will have traffic from all devices but overall the statistics suggest that most of their mobile site users are less engaged than their app users.
In my experience, working with print and digital publishers it is typical for a user to generate up to 10 impressions per visit but at an absolute minimum of visiting the site or apps 2 to 3 times a week. This would mean you would have to divide those impressions (generated by the users) by approximately 12. In doing that, the numbers would suggest that only their Android app and iPad app are delivering a rich experience where the user is most engaged generating 9 to 6 impressions per visit respectively. The others fall well short of this and their mobile internet site alarmingly so.
A dedicated mobile site giving users access to guardiannews.comcontent any time and from any device. It is optimised for mobile screen sizes and connection speeds.
Traffic:
2.5 million monthly unique browsers
6.2 million monthly page views
m.guardian is showing incredible growth and almost doubled its traffic over the course of 2011 – growth that is outstripping total growth of the mobile internet market (+25% yr on yr).
Users are accessing a broad range of content through m.guardian with the top five most visited sections being world news, football, sport, technology and Comment is free. Comment is free alone delivers over 250,000 page views per month – an indication that users are valuable opinion leaders.
An award winning iPhone app featuring video, live blogs and more that is available free to users in the US.
Traffic:
34,000 monthly unique browsers
1 million monthly page views
With steady growth in unique browsers of almost 50% over the last four months, the iPhone app is another strong performer in GNM’s mobile portfolio. What’s more, the proportion of heavy users is high at just over 50%. That, combined with a strong frequency metric for user behaviour, indicates a very loyal and engaged audience.
In addition to the regular news content, users have a strong preference for football, sport and business content.
We launched our critically acclaimed iPad app in October 2011 and since then it has been downloaded more than 500,000 times (globally). With a clean, modern design and easy navigation the Guardian iPad app is immensely readable.
Traffic:
45,113 monthly unique browsers
3.45 million monthly page views
Free to download and available from the Android market worldwide it contains the latest news, sport, comment, reviews, videos, podcasts and picture galleries from the Guardian website.
Traffic:
11,000 monthly unique browsers
1.2 million monthly page views
The app delivers a globally minded audience of opinion leaders and the most popular sections include football, Comment is free and world news.
Furthermore, over one in three are heavy users and this has steadily increased over the last few months – an indication that user loyalty and engagement is growing.
SOURCE**: Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/advertising/mobile?newsfeed=true)
My Comments on the below:
It is becoming harder and harder to differentiate between a smartphone and tablet. However, there are two distinctive behaviours that will not change. Browsing the internet ‘at home’ and ‘on the go’. There is a certain size tablet that will mainly stay at home for the internet browsing as described in the article such as an iPad or other earlier tablet devices. In parallel, the newer smaller devices such as Galaxy Note that blur the line between smartphone and tablet lean towards being a device that access information ‘on the go’ and equally ‘at home’. The key difference is they are delivering a larger visual experience ‘on the go’ and a larger enough experience to access the internet ‘at home’ that could be considered richer than traditional smartphones. Maybe we should call them internetphones
Posted By } David Moth
One tablet generates as many website visits as four smartphones, according to data from Adobe’s Digital Index Report.
By the end of Q1 2012 smartphones accounted for 6.1% of site visits compared to 4.3% on tablet.
However, smartphones only maintain a greater share of website visits due to the lower penetration rate of tablets.
The report highlights that from 2010 through to 2011 there were 5.3 times more smartphones shipped across North America and Western Europe compared to tablets.

Adobe predicts that at its current rate of growth tablet traffic will surpass smartphone traffic within 12 months.
Within a year of its launch in Q2 2010 the iPad accounted for 1% of total website visits, reaching 4.3% of total visits by the end of 2011.
In contrast, within the first two years of the iPhone market entry, smartphones accounted for 0.4% of total website visits, taking nearly three years to reach 1% of total visits.
If this trend continues then tablets will account for more than 10% of website visits in 2014.

But Adobe’s report isn’t the first piece of research to highlight the growing popularity of tablets.
A recent survey by InMobi and Mobext found that 69% of tablet owners make a purchase on their device every month.
This highlights the fact that e-tailers need to have a tablet strategy in place.
Our comprehensive blog post, ‘tablets: the opportunity for marketers‘, has a number of tips for how advertisers should seek to target tablet users.
However, we should also be careful not to overstate the importance of tablets, as despite similar levels of engagement PCs drive disproportionately more website visits than tablets.
Adobe’s report shows across North America and Western Europe there were six times more PCs shipped than tablets in between 2009 and 2011.
Yet in Q1 2012 PCs accounted for 19 times more website visits.
The reasons for this are fairly obvious – people use PCs all day at work, and most tablet owners will also use a PC for browsing at home.
Adobe report also appears to fail to take into account the millions of PCs in existence before 2009.
Finally, the data shows that tablet users are more likely to use their device to visit certain types of websites.
For example, consumers consider tablets and PCs to be nearly interchangeable for media consumption and for repeated interactions with financial service providers.
“This suggests that consumers consider tablets to be similar to PCs for visits that are repeated, routine, involve passive consumption of content, and so on.”
However, PC conversion rates are much higher than tablet for retail and travel sites, “suggesting that consumers prefer PCs for visits involving research, comparison of alternatives, and online purchasing.”

Adobe’s Digital Index Report presents findings from an analysis of 23bn visits made to more than 325 mobile and traditional brand websites from January to March of 2010, 2011 and 2012.