Defining the Mobile Problem for Publishers

Check out this sneak peek of our Technology Issue where we explore the most pressing technology issues of the day. In this column Stephen Masiclat, director of Syracuse University's New Media Management graduate program outlines the mobile problem and why ultimately it's a platform publishers cannot ignore. Olga O'Donnell has heard the hype, the relentless insistence that you have to be "mobile first." She's seen the numbers for mobile phone adoption too. But right now she just isn't convinced her company should worry too much about the mobile platform. O'Donnell is director of sales strategy and client services for USA Today, and in that position she's come to believe that right now, mobile is just not an attractive platform for publishers. O'Donnell sees four fundamental problems with mobile content: the cost to participate is significant, it's not a high-engagement platform for content, the advertising ecosystem isn't standardized, and there is no rich data for publishers to monetize. But publishers can't afford to ignore mobile for a simple reason: That's where the audience is. And therein lies the "mobile problem" that publishers are facing. Following are insights from some media and technology leaders on how they define The Mobile Problem and what publishers might do to solve it. Paying & Paying to PlayA publisher just getting into mobile platforms has to make a significant number of complex decisions. Do you build a native app or a responsive site? Do you launch on all major devices and operating systems or just the largest ones? Can your current CMS push content to mobile gateways or do you have to deploy a new system? How much re-training does your editorial and sales staff need to support this new platform? And these questions are never really resolved because every time a new "must have" device appears, you have be prepared to re-build. This was the case when Apple released the high-resolution "Retina" screens and larger iPhones that required apps to quickly upgrade. The mobile landscape is so confusing that according to New York Post web editor Neil Nagraj the complete digital solution -- including mobile -- for NYPost.com was a responsive web site added to the WordPress CMS that News Corp recently adopted. "WordPress let us radically improve our workflow, and it's also the fastest, and therefore cheapest way to get content to our mobile readers." Yet it's likely that for the time being life on the cutting edge will require constant work, says Eric Simon, executive vice president of operations and general manager at Yieldmo, a startup helping publishers monetize content on mobile platforms. "Leaders, like CNN and Reuters have rolled out apps for both iOS and Android, and are in a constant state of updating, redesign, optimization. We have certainly seen people struggle with being strategic on this front." But Simon believes that the effort will definitely pay off. Organizations have to get smarter and faster over time, and waiting for things to get easy has never been a good business strategy. Publishers can only figure out what works by experimenting. "The small screen is a different animal and many have seen monetization suffer if they just try to copy over all their content and have it appear the same way it does on desktop to the mobile web and this is where a lot of work is required." Mobile Is Not a High-Engagement PlatformThe current mobile experience doesn't align with the viable revenue models on which publishers currently rely. Readers thumb quickly through articles killing time while they wait for a bus or a sandwich. They launch specialty apps to quickly get sports scores. Mark Coatney, senior vice president of digital for Al Jazeera America, says this user behavior pattern is the single biggest barrier to engagement. "On a mobile phone I'm not just competing with CNN and MSNBC. I'm competing with every app on that user's phone, and every distraction that takes her away from the phone," says Coatney. Critics of mobile argue that users don't have the time or screen real estate to linger and be exposed to the profitable contextual display ads that publishers sell as premium inventory. But Simon disagrees sharply with this notion. "We have data to show that the opposite is true, especially around time spent. Because it's a much more personal experience than desktop, users are much more engaged with both content and advertising on mobile platforms." Non-Standard Advertising SystemBuilding a native app means you're selling in-app advertising. That means a dedicated sales and technology staff -- or Google ads. A responsive site allows publishers to sell premium ads and use the programmatic trading desks for excess inventory, a solution that has enough stability to support publishers. That isn't true for mobile inventory, and as the number of mobile smart phones has grown, so has the available inventory for mobile ad impressions. "Not only is there too much supply and not enough demand right now, but it's not premium inventory. Mobile just isn't an experience many advertisers are willing to pay for," says O'Donnell. That supply is bought and sold through a dizzying array of partners and exchanges, but the carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica and many, many others worldwide -- are also vying for revenue. The appearance of carriers, and the fact that they are powerful gatekeepers, means we are years away from a standard system that fairly allows everyone to do business. The lack of an open standard is exactly the kind of asymmetry that gives rise to companies like Yieldmo. The startup's mobile ad exchange connects premium inventory with both brand and direct-response marketers. They also partner with the entire programmatic and RTB (real time bidding) ecosystem by integrating with DSPs (demand side platforms), DMPs (data management platforms) and trading desks to execute against first party data targeting. Yieldmo is experimenting with quite a few different mobile ad formats because it knows that one simple standard won't emerge. The mobile problem will require a set of solutions that evolve in response to advertiser need and audience behavior. "Right now, the current state of the market on the advertising side is that publishers are just pushing banners from desktop into their mobile sites," says Simon. "The result is a terrible looking ad that has both low engagement and low click-through rate. Advertisers need native ad formats for mobile and not the standard IAB banners that they have been using for the past 10 years. You could call this the beginning of the end for the banner but it will not happen overnight." The Biggest DataMobile phones generate a lot of data. Every app you use, every site you visit, and everywhere you go, the phone is keeping track. A mobile phone is always on and always asking where it is. Literally. Every eight seconds, a mobile phone "pings" a cellular tower -- or two -- to determine its general location. The accuracy of that location data increases dramatically if you've got wi-fi, Bluetooth, and a GPS app running in the background. As the iPhone tells you (when you turn off wi-fi) "location accuracy is improved when wi-fi is turned on." That location data is an additional layer of insight that just isn't available to publishers in the current digital advertising ecosystem. It's the kind of data around which O'Donnell wants to build a premium service. "We need to be able to re-target ads, and if we could re-target based on location that would be a premium advertising experience we could build a profitable enterprise on." The typical way to get that data is to build a native app, but as publishers are discovering, that essentially forces them to become software developers. What's a Publisher to Do?There's a quote attributed to President Teddy Roosevelt that applies to the publisher's quandary: In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Publishers simply can't afford to do nothing on mobile platforms. This is a time for experimentation. The great news for publishers is that the plethora of problems and challenges has attracted a host of new startups with some interesting ideas and great technology. Publishers have to be fearless about partnering -- with these new companies and each other -- in order to get the creativity, technology, and audience scale that will attract advertisers. It's starting to happen. Pangea Alliance, a new programmatic ad exchange, launched in April. Pangea was developed by the Guardian, Reuters, The Financial Times, CNN International, and The Economist. These publishers partnered to build the global audience scale required to fight the drain of ad dollars to Google and Facebook. Smaller publishers should consider forming their own alliances. Standards and scale can be built through mutually beneficial partnerships. Innovation happens when you connect with new startups with different ideas. The mobile problem is complex, big, and shifting. It just doesn't make sense for publishers to try and solve it alone. Stephen Masiclat is director of Syracuse University's New Media Management graduate program, a joint program offered by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

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Defining the Mobile Problem for Publishers

Stephen Masiclat

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Stephen Masiclat