Mobile Readers Abound; the Ads, Not So Much

Mobile Readers Abound; the Ads, Not So Much 

Mark Howard, chief revenue officer at Forbes, said around half of visits to its properties now come from non-desktop devices, and the company is able to sell mobile ads for approximately the same price as desktop ones. But because phones have smaller screens, squeezing in as many ads for mobile users as desktop users is hard.
“The desktop is still creating 70% of our inventory,” Mr. Howard said.
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The boom in desktop Web advertising over the past two decades was helped along by advanced tracking and targeting mechanisms that don’t work anywhere near as well on smartphones and tablets.
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Some publishers are experimenting with new ad formats and tactics. The New York Times will soon test a new ad product that breaks a day into seven parts and allows marketers to target messages to users in these particular “moments.”
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Some publishers have decided they can advance their cause by partnering with Facebook, which in many cases knows more about their mobile audiences than they do.
BuzzFeed, Daily Mail, the Atlantic and the New York Times are among the partners in the “Instant Articles” program, which lets news sites publish stories directly to Facebook. Publishers keep 70% of revenue from ads that Facebook sells, and 100% of revenue from ads they sell themselves.
“We’re hopeful these platforms can monetize our content at a higher rate than we can because they have more data on users,” said Jon Steinberg, the Daily Mail’s North America chief executive.



http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/08/24/for-publishers-mobile-readers-abound-the-ads-not-so-much/