Archive for the ‘Publishing Industry’ Category

Guardian mobile site drives mores unique browsers & traffic than apps & tablets combined but where is the engagement?

Posted: May 17, 2012 in Digital Marketing, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Technology, Online, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Tablets, Technology, Uncategorized, User Experience & Usability
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Deutsch: logo der tageszeitung the guardian

the guardian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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?

Mobile Internet

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.

The iphone app is a little better…

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…

iPad app

45,113 monthly uniques generating 3.45 million page impressions equates to 1 customer visiting once a month generating 75 page impressions per visit.

Android app

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.

What does this all mean?

Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...

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.

m.guardian**

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.

iPhone app

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.

iPad app

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

Android App

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)

Shoes.com: 85pc of purchases come from mobile Web, not apps

Posted: May 11, 2011 in Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, E-Commerce, Industry News, Information communications technology, Internet, M-Commerce, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Search, Mobile Technology, Multichannel Marketing, Online, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Retail, Search, Smartphones, Strategy and Planning, Technology, Telecommunications
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My Comments on the below:

I am a bit late finding this article but there you go.  I find the stats really interesting.  Despite the fact they offer shoes for all, I am guessing here that their main user base is made up of Women.  I can instantly relate to their experience.  If I look at my partner who since purchasing her an android phone (6 months ago), who by the way is a kind of techno-phoebe, has moved from a 0 to a 10 user of the mobile internet (0 being not at all and 10 being everyday more than once).  However, despite this amazing change of her use of phones not once has she been bothered by apps.  This is not because she is not aware or has not tried them but she is used to searching for content when she wants.  She finds it easy.  She already knows which sites she has interest in and what sites she would buy clothes/shoes and whatever other flavour.  It is interesting as her peers also share the same thought process, yet their male counterparts and very engrossed into both mobile internet & apps.  In fact the more I think about it especially apps that help them not have to think for themselves or games of course!  Anyhow, before I digress, this supports the experience shoes.com has described.  As women, being the main demographic (again this is an assumption) of shoes.com, they are comfortable and familiar with SEARCH (and aren’t we all, no matter our gender) hence making more purchases via the mobile site than apps.  Therefore, as long as the e-commerce site is mobile optimised and the URL re-directs are in place then their customers will happily discover and purchase via the mobile internet site (as we in the industry call m-commerce, a transaction made via the mobile device).

In the early adoption days of mobile internet we saw that many publisher, media owners and e-commerce sites were receiving anywhere up to 5% of their users online coming from a mobile device.  Whilst with one hand this was positive news, with the other it was bad. As the sites that were not optimised for mobile you can start to work out the potential loss of revenues and/or damage to the brand/media owner by delivering a poor user experience and/or no real payment flow.  Traditional publishers and media owners quickly woke up when they saw these stats.  However, the retail industry was very slow to react.  It wasn’t until Steve Jobs created the iPhone and apps that they retail sector started to take the space semi-seriously.  It is great to see now how retailers or e-commerce sites are starting to understand and experience this space better and as the article suggests ‘not just jumping on the app-bandwagon’.

Posted By ] Rimma Kats

Shoes.com's mobile site

SAN FRANCISCO – A Brown Shoes Co. exec at the Mobile Shopping Summit said that 85 percent of mobile purchases come from the shoes.com mobile site and not its applications, proving that retailers should focus on having a Web presence before jumping on the app bandwagon.

Panelists during the “Mobile Roadmap Part I: Key Evaluation Criteria For Developing Your Initial Mobile Platform – The Keys To Mobile Merchandizing” session discussed the challenges and success their companies face with mobile. The panel was moderated by Marci Troutman, CEO of Sitminis, Atlanta.

“We had a strong ecommerce platform,” said Pete Hogan, vice president of ecommerce at Brown Shoe Co., St. Louis. “We were seeing a lot of agencies contact us about mobile and there were few players in the game two years ago.

“Eighty-five percent of our mobile sales come from the mobile Web and not apps,” he said.

Future of mobile
According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s long-term mobile strategy will involve the use of HTML5 to provide a richer experience to consumers on their mobile devices.

For companies that are looking to develop mobile sites or apps, it is important to keep the consumer in mind and try to make the overall mobile commerce experience as seamless as possible.

“Think about your business and how many times people touch your business,” Mr. Hogan said. “If you’re Starbucks then it’s daily, if you’re McDonalds it’s weekly.

“If our customer is a registered customer, we wanted to make sure we auto filled their shipping information,” he said. “That’s where you help them save time.”

A majority of consumers who download applications to their mobile devices do not use most of them.

A mobile site is an ideal tool to capture that consumer at the point-of-sale, per the panelists.

However, companies wanting to enter the application space should make sure that their apps provide a different experience than the mobile site. A lot of the time, mobile apps are geared towards loyalists, pushing deals and alerts to them daily.

There needs to be an incentive for consumers to click on that app icon when they want to shop instead of going to the company’s mobile site.

The mobile site, on the other hand, is an access point for existing and potential customers and should be treated with that in mind.

Brown Shoe first developed a mobile site and then an iPhone application.

Currently, the company has three iPhone applications, three mobile-optimized sites and three Android apps.

According to Mr. Hogan, the company’s mobile site mimics its ecommerce site and now features personalized recommendations and ratings.

“We tried to add most of the bells and whistles,” Mr. Hogan said. “However, there are still a few missing things.

“Tracking is also important – we can see when customers are coming to our mobile properties,” he said. “The ROI is trackable.”

Mobile extension
Dale Monson, senior vice president of operations at The Sportsman’s Guide, said that the company is currently working on a second version of its mobile site.

Although the company has a mobile presence, Mr. Monson said that it has not invested in marketing efforts to promote its applications.

“When we launched our iPhone app, we wanted to make sure we were in the market,” Mr. Monson said. “The main challenge we had was a lot of items on our Web site and it’s difficult to push that into the mobile and have consumers shop easily.

“However, we have not had a good marketing program yet to push the downloads,” he said. “We have not invested in marketing efforts for our apps.”

Via: http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2011/04/28/shoes-com-85pc-of-purchases-come-from-mobile-web-not-apps

Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily and Mobile Marketer. Reach her at rimma@mobilemarketer.com.

Mobile Marketing Issue 4 Online Now

Posted: January 6, 2011 in Digital Marketing, Industry News, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Ad Networks, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Technology, Performance Advertising, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Technology, Ubiyoo News
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The latest digital edition of our print magazine is available to view online now.

The issue contains a full rundown of our Awards winners, presented at a ceremony in London yesterday evening. There’s also a focus on mobile marketing in Latin America, and a look at the rise and rise of mobile loyalty services like Foursquare and Gowalla.

Mick Rigby, chairman of Yodel Digital, loks at the lessons we can learn from the web to help predict the sort of future mobile might enjoy. And Helen Keegan gives her verdict on Windows Phone 7.

We also take a look at the development of Tesco.com’s grocery shopping app, tracing its progress from the drawing board to the iPhone. And in our big interview, we talk to Christian Louca, global managing director of mobile ad network, ubiyoo.

You can access issue 4 of Mobile Marketing here.

Via:

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/mobile-marketing-issue-4-online-now

News Corp’s calls its app newspaper ‘The Daily’ – backs with $30m budget

Posted: November 17, 2010 in Digital Marketing, Industry News, Information communications technology, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Applications, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Publishing, Publishing Industry
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Posted by] @gordonmacmillan, posted on 17 November, 2010

Things are reported to becoming together for News Corporation’s app based newspaper, which is to simply be called The Daily, as a string of staff are hired to write content and a budget of around $30 million has been assigned.

The project is expected to launch before the end of the year and Rupert Murdoch is said to be personally heavily involved in the development of The Daily, which at one time was rumoured was going to be named The Daily Planet.

News Corp is said to giving The Daily a budget of $30 million for the first year far outstripping the resources of any editorial start-up. That will pay for a large headcount, which according to Forbes, is said to be around 150 with a string of freelancers also being lined-up.

Earlier this year, as News Corp readied the launch of its new specialist app unit, News Corp boss Murdoch said:  “we can deliver our content to our readers when, where and how they want it. It’s cheap, convenient and constantly up-to-date.”

In the summer it hired Jesse Angelo the New York Post executive editor who will run The Daily alongside Greg Clayman, the former head of Viacom’s digital division.

You can get a flavour of the kind of app paper that News Corp is building from the people it is hiring.

What’s so interesting about this development is that not only will it be the first original app newspaper, but it echoes the earlier development of the web.

It sort of reminds me of Slate and how that launched in the early days of the web back in 1996. That helped to kick start things and show how new digital brands could be developed. We’re kind of at that stage again.

The New York Times reports that Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, is to be culture editor.

Other hires on the editorial side include digital news editor and writer Mike Nizza, who has worked at AOL, the Atlantic, and The New York Times.

Also on-board is Elisabeth Eaves as opinion editor, according to the Cutline. She is a former contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and funnily enough Slate. She is also the author of the first-person book about stripping: “Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power.” Racy.

Avi Zenilman is joining to report on business having previously worked for Politico and with Frere-Jones at the New Yorker where he was online news editor.

News Corp is also pulling top talent from in-house and hired the longtime Page Six editor, Richard Johnson, at the The Daily’s sister News Corp title the New York Post. Johnson has hired another Page Sixer – ex-Maxim editor Chris Wilson. Together they will develop The Daily’s celebrity and gossip coverage.

The development comes as elsewhere in newspaper app land Poynter Online reports that The Oklahoman, which launched a new iPad app last month, won’t be handing the revenue it generates to Apple. Equally, the newspaper will retain a direct relationship with every consumer who buys either a single copy or a subscription.
Via: http://wallblog.co.uk/2010/11/17/news-corps-app-newspaper-the-daily-takes-shape/

All Change @ YOC and a move to ubiyoo

Posted: September 28, 2010 in Display advertising, Industry News, Information communications technology, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Mobile Platforms, Mobile Technology, Performance Advertising, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Trade Associations, Ubiyoo News, Uncategorized, YOC news
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Dear All,

I am now working as Managing Director for Ubiyoo Ltd, a YOC AG subsidiary.  After nearly three years of growing YOC Ltd in the UK market, I am now moving on to take responsibility of ubiyoo,  a global web-based self-serve advertising platform.  It has been great working for YOC Ltd, and since its birth when I joined in March 2008, it has become the UK’s leading open premium network.  Working with many of the UK’s leading media owners and print publishers reaching over 5 million people and generating over 250 million monthly page impressions, it is an impressive accomplishment to achieve in a short time in a very competitive market.  I would like to thank the team at YOC Ltd for all their hard work and commitment to achieving the success for all our clients and partners.  This was possible due to the great work ethos and a mindset that is rarely seen.  May it long continue.   We had the privilege to acquire the very successful Bluestar Mobile Ltd in the middle of 2009 and this great team is now fully integrated into YOC Ltd, offering services across our three main business lines of mobile advertising, mobile marketing and mobile internet.

As a company it does not get much better, with mobile the insight and vision YOC has is above most.  Their ‘Passion’ for mobile is at the heart of everything.

Christian Louca

For more information on Ubiyoo Ltd, please visit http://www.ubiyoo.com

Ilicco Elia, Reuters ] NMA

Posted: September 23, 2010 in Industry News, Media & Entertainment, Publishing, Publishing Industry
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Comment:

I have the pleasure of knowing Ili and he is a good guy.  This is a great piece on the man!

Posted By ] Ronan Shields, 23 September 2010

curriculum vitae

  • Name
    Ilicco Elia
  • Title
    Global head of mobile, Reuters Media
  • Age
    39
  • Twitter
    @ilicco
  • Education
    1990-93: BEng, Civil Engineering, University of Manchester
  • Career
    1993-96: Manager, design studio, Reuters
    1996-98 Corporate brand manager, Reuters
    1998-2002: Head of online customer experience, Reuters
    2002-05: Next-generation products design manager, Reuters
    2005-10: Mobile and emerging media manager, Thomson Reuters

Having worked for Reuters since 1993, global head of mobile Ilicco Elia is a true advocate of the channel and is well placed to ensure mobile is at the forefront of company-wide activity.

After almost two decades at Reuters, five years spent specifically on mobile, Ilicco Elia is a bona fide veteran of the industry. “At Reuters we’ve been going mobile for a number of years,” he says. “When I started, I was part of the emerging media team and I stayed there until one of the bosses decided we had emerged.”

This year, Elia was one of only a handful of mobile specialists in MediaGuardian’s 100 most powerful people in media, ranking alongside luminaries such as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. However, this is an accolade he’s modest about. “I don’t think of myself as having a profile,” he says, “but maybe that’s not for me to decide.”

Elia’s day-to-day job is leading his development team, but it’s his willingness to integrate with the rest of the Reuters organisation – departments such as editorial and sales – that has cemented his influential reputation.

Given the comparatively early dawn of mobile within Reuters – starting by loading content from a desktop computer onto a PDA – much of Elia’s time is now spent convincing the wider industry to adopt the medium. “As an industry we need to spread the word of mobile outside the usual audience that you see gathering at mobile conferences,” he says. “Mobile needs to be incorporated into wider media plans because it’s very difficult to make it work for advertisers on its own. We need to speak to TV media planners and show them how mobile can fit into their strategies and make ad campaigns more effective.”

These new ad opportunities on mobile are generated by the growing consumer demand for mobile news services, Elia says. Total traffic to Reuter’s mobile sites is 10% of that to its online sites. He cites the halo effect of Apple’s entry into the mobile market as fanning this demand, which has shaped the nature of his job ever since.

However, while the launch of mobile apps on hero devices such as the iPad or the latest Android phone generates the majority of headlines, Elia’s international remit also includes services such as SMS alerts, which he deems equally important. “These types of service are still popular in European markets such as Spain and Italy, or even further afield in places like India, but in the UK they’re not what you’d call thriving,” he says.

With the mobile industry still growing, a potential schism could emerge, forcing people to choose between advocating mobile apps or the less siloed mobile internet, but Elia is committed to neither on an exclusive basis. He views such debates as premature and thinks, if they do anything, it’s only to hamstring the mobile advertising market at a time when it can ill afford to be so.

“Neither apps nor browsers will win out,” he says. “As an industry, we need both as they each serve a different purpose and audience. When the app stores start to stock millions of apps, then brands will have to deal with discoverability issues in just the same way they have to on the web. Neither is perfect.”

The philosophy within Reuters is to be as accessible as possible on all platforms. Although Apple’s range of mobile devices generates a lot of buzz, Elia is acutely aware that media owners need to think way beyond this single platform. “If you’re going to do anything on mobile you have to be in it for the long haul, it’s not just about what’s fashionable now,” he says. “We made a conscious decision not to be seen favouring one platform over another so we work with all the handset manufacturers to make our content widely available.”

One partner that has proven important is BlackBerry manufacturer RIM, which has direct links to Thomson Reuters sites embedded in some of its devices. Elia has struck similar deals with Nokia and other manufacturers. “We also work with mobile operators to link to our site from their portals. Each partner brings something different. We try to work out what’s the best fit for their audience and ours with each partnership.”

One industry trend that excites Elia is the “mobile first” mantra coined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

People are starting to look for information on their mobile first. Those who use the mobile internet see a massive benefit and we’re tasked with giving these people what they want,” Elia says.

He expresses similar approval for Apple’s recent social networking service Ping, which was simultaneously launched on mobile and online. “I like the fact you’re seeing the big names taking mobile into consideration in the first iteration of their products,” he says.

“If someone keeps track of their stock portfolio online then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do it on their mobile,” he adds, speaking about his own company. Reuters is currently tailoring its mobile products to its readers’ personal preferences and further integrating mobile into the core of its products. “Part of my job is to show editorial departments how they can use mobile in their day-to-day jobs. We’ve participated with Nokia as part of a ’mobile journalism’ tie-up which involved giving phones to our journalists, which they can use to better report on stories. That has now been integrated into our normal practice,” he says.

As for new mobile products, Elia believes the emerging tablet market has great potential and will occupy a lot of his time in the near future. “We’ve already launched some apps for the iPad [such as the Reuters Galleries],” he says, “and it’ll be interesting to see how the market takes off when Android tablets appear.”

Via: http://www.nma.co.uk/features/profiles/ilicco-elia-reuters/3018474.article

Google’s UK boss sees mobile internet as the future

Posted: July 6, 2010 in Industry News, Information communications technology, M-Commerce, Media & Entertainment, Mobile Industry News, Mobile Internet, Multichannel Marketing, Publishing, Publishing Industry, Retail, Technology
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My Comment on the below:

I quite agree, the mobile internet revolution is here and is only a matter of time before it overtakes the traditional fixed line.

Monday 05 July 2010

Mobile internet is the future, according to Google UK boss

Google’s UK chief executive doesn’t believe in planning for the long term, but he does believe that mobile internet will be a big part of the future.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Matt Brittin discussed the way that people in Britain access the internet, and the way he expects that to change in coming years. With 70 per cent of the country already online via broadband, and UK consumers spending nearly 3 times as much online as our US counterparts, it would seem that we’re already very much in the internet age. But Brittin reckons that we’re only seeing the start.

“As growth in broadband starts to flatten off, we’re seeing the next wave. The big shift is to mobile internet,” he says. “Between 25 and 30 per cent of consumers use their mobiles to access the internet. But in three years’ time analysts believe more people will be accessing it from their mobiles than from a desktop. That’s a massive change.”

“We’re in a really interesting transition,” he added. “It’s like we’ve reached the end of digital. In the past businesses have thought they need a digital department. Now, it’s no longer separate, it’s part of what we do daily.”

And analysts tend to agree with Brittin’s point of view. Verdict and Ovum recently released a study into mobile shopping – or m-commerce, as it’s being called – which concluded that retail sales via the mobile internet channel could double in the next three years, to be worth as much as £275 million by 2013. Recognising the trend, the smarter retailers are jumping on board with specially optimised mobile shopping sites; and with only 2.1 per cent of adults in the UK shopping via smartphone now, there’s massive room for growth come the mobile revolution.

URL Link:

http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/news/20100705-googles-uk-boss-sees-mobile-broadband-future

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