There’s a pretty good chance you’re reading this on a smartphone or a tablet.
Every year since 2006 has been touted as “the year of mobile” by industry pundits and conference panels, but for many publishers, 2013 is emerging as the year mobile went from being an afterthought to the first thought. A year ago many publishers saw their non-desktop traffic hovering around the 25 percent mark, which is interesting to talk about but small enough to ignore. Today, that portion is rapidly approaching half.
Publishers can no longer afford to simply pay lip service to their mobile traffic; they now have little choice but to make it a focus of their businesses.
To paint a picture of we asked a cross section of publishers what portion of their traffic now comes from non-desktop sites versus a year ago. Here’s what they said.
BuzzFeed
Half of all traffic to BuzzFeed’s properties now comes from non-desktop devices, the company said, up from 31 percent in April 2012. During that period, overall traffic has more than tripled, it added, indicating that its mobile audience is growing significantly faster than desktop.
Forbes
In September, 35 percent of visits to Forbes properties came from phones and tablets, compared with 25 percent 12 months ago. That represents a 40 percent year-over-year increase.
Huffington Post
According to the Huffington Post, its mobile Web traffic grew 20 percent between July and September of 2013 alone.
SheKnows
Forty-two percent of SheKnows pageviews were served to non-desktop devices in the past 30 days, compared to 27 percent during the same period last year. That represents 56 percent growth, year-over-year. A third (31 percent) of its non-desktop traffic came from smartphone devices, and 11 percent from tablets, the company said.
YouTube
It’s not a publisher as such, but the video site recently revealed that 41 percent of its traffic now comes from non-desktop devices. That’s up from 25 percent in 2012 and just 6 percent in 2011.
Complex
In the past month, 38 percent of Complex.com’s pageviews were served to non-desktop devices, up from 24 percent during the same period last year. That’s a 58 percent increase.
The Awl
Thirty percent of traffic to The Awl’s sites now comes from phones and tablets. That’s a 39 percent increase over the same period last year.
More in Media
Walmart rolls out a self-serve, supplier-driven insights connectors
The retail giant paired its insights unit Luminate with Walmart Connect to help suppliers optimize for customer consumption, just in time for the holidays, explained the company’s CRO Seth Dallaire.
Research Briefing: BuzzFeed pivots business to AI media and tech as publishers increase use of AI
In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine BuzzFeed’s plans to pivot the business to an AI-driven tech and media company, how marketers’ use of X and ad spending has dropped dramatically, and how agency executives are fed up with Meta’s ad platform bugs and overcharges, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.
Media Briefing: Q1 is done and publishers’ ad revenue is doing ‘fine’
Despite the hope that 2024 would be a turning point for publishers’ advertising businesses, the first quarter of the year proved to be a mixed bag, according to three publishers.