Will the main advertising challenge for publishers in 2013 deal with mobile monetization, before other main topics such as RTB ? In 2013, most of their traffic might come from a platform they don’t have clear view of how to monetize it right yet.
In our previous infographics (3 key points about mobile advertising in 2013, Euro 2012, Olympics 2012 ), we highlighted the fast-paced rising share of mobile traffic in key channels, such as Sports & News.
In our News panel of publishers, mobile accounted for 32% of pages views in Q4 2012, matching other recent external sources (32% of WSJ traffic coming from mobile).
These 2 channels overperforms the average: in average, 72% of digital traffic come from desktop //28% from mobile in Q4 2012, from over 50 premium leading cross-platform publishers we studied.
Since mobile traffic has at least doubled since last year in most of studied countries (see source), at this pace, 2013 will be the key year when traffic to most publishers’ properties start being mobile-driven.
Digital traffic share
To embrace & take the most of this trend, publishers have been spending a lot: they are facing substantial technical costs in building & maintaining several versions of mobile sites & apps, revamping their website in responsive design without being able yet to put in, on the other side of the profit & loss sheet, a line of revenues as substantial.
This might be the biggest challenge for publishers in 2013: the audience is switching from desktop, a platform they had clear view on how to best monetize their web audience, with a very advanced & sophisticated ecosystem (Big data, RTB,…) to mobile.
