Mobile devices have kept taking a larger place in our lives for as long as they’ve been around. Weirdly enough, even though a larger share of digital visits happens on mobile, we’re still thinking of online advertising through the lens of a computer screen and most publishers have barely started to optimize their mobile inventory, let alone making it their #1 priority.
Let’s put this in perspective by looking at some numbers. Mobile Internet advertising revenue now accounts for 69.6% of all online advertising revenue (source internet Ad revenue report 2019 )– a share that amounted to $189B worldwide in 2019, projected to be at $240B next year (source: Statista ) Having outpaced desktop advertising growth over 15 to 1 since 2010 (total Internet advertising revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR), mobile vs desktop– Mekko graphics. This means that mobile inventory keeps being more valuable and a place of choice for marketers to reach users. The trend will only get stronger, with mobile projected to become the only way to get online for a whole 72.6% of Internet users, as soon as in 2025 CNBC.
Now that we have a better understanding of why mobile optimization matters, let’s look at what can be done. The most important step for optimizing a site for mobile comes early in the design stage, by keeping mobile front of mind throughout the development and evolution of the site. That’s because we want to start the design process with the most complex device design in mind, mobile (complex because of how stripped down yet packing tons of information it needs to be). Once this mobile-centric design is ready and approved, it is time to move on to the larger-screened devices’ designs where it’s far easier to add features and interactions. Going this way ensures that you don’t sacrifice user-friendliness on mobile, which is often the case when working the other way around.
Ultimately, following mobile optimization strategies helps publishers in a number of key areas:
- Traffic growth: user experience is critical to make users come back to a site. Thinking mobile first and building your site accordingly will have a lasting impact on user experience, and ultimately on making users come back.
- Ad experience: Advertising pay attention to KPIs, which are heavily impacted by a site’s layout, and to how users experience their ads. And we all know how important it is to be good partners to our revenue partners.
- Revenues: That’s the sum of the above right there, between the impact on traffic patterns, ad experience and density and ultimately advertising rates.
We barely touched the subject and yet we already see the huge challenge – and opportunity – offered by mobile optimization. Our team at AudienceRun help publishers provide users with an impeccable Ad experience while generating incremental revenue, so should you ever have any question, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to chat.
