More Mobile News Consumers Choosing Web Over Apps
Mobile apps were supposed to be the reset button for the news industry. The last fifteen years have shown how hard it is to get consumers to pay for content on websites or pay attention to ads there. In the app environment, all that was going to be different.
Context & Ripple Effects
The app-first premise for mobile publishing was already under pressure: a 2010 report found mobile users preferred browsers to apps, and a 2012 examination of publishers’ difficulties with apps questioned whether native distribution suited news organizations. The reported preference for the web matters because it shifts the mobile news audience toward a channel publishers already know is difficult to monetize.
First-order effects
- News publishers must treat the mobile web as a primary reader destination rather than rely on apps as the default container for news consumption.
- App-based news products lose some of the assumed advantage in reaching mobile readers, while browser-based publishing retains direct importance.
Second-order effects
- Publishers’ mobile advertising and subscription efforts face renewed pressure to work in browsers, where the article notes payment and attention to advertising have been difficult.
- Mobile ad providers pursuing inventory beyond native apps, including Greystripe’s move to take mobile ads beyond the app environment, have a larger strategic reason to support web delivery.
Third-order effects
- If reader preference continues to favor browsers, mobile news distribution will be shaped less by proprietary app destinations and more by publishers’ ability to make the open web usable and monetizable on small screens.
The trend: Mobile publishing is becoming a contest between the app industry’s promised control over audience and revenue and the web’s lower-friction reach for news readers.