Publishers and brands refine mobile content strategy, reflect on relationship with consumers
Mobile content strategy is wide open these days, as publishers strive to make the right moves toward monetizing a burgeoning medium and avoid blowing a golden opportunity. But mastering mobile is tough. Audience behavior, app technology, and ad kinks to be ironed out can complicate strategy, but digital magazines and other brands must stay the course when it comes to producing quality content and tailoring it for mobile devices.
MediaPost covers mobile content strategy in a few recent articles, including one on LinkedIn’s new direction with Pulse. Let’s start there today!
LinkedIn to Focus on Mobile Content Strategy With Pulse
Platform turned publisher LinkedIn has made several moves in the recent years – including acquiring online learning leader Lynda.com for $1.5 billion in April – in a effort to shape its mobile content strategy. Now, it has announced that newsreader service Pulse will be revamped to become a mobile app, MediaPost reports.
“Instead of slapping features on to the old reader app, we decided to completely redesign the new Pulse experience from the ground up,” wrote Pulse Product Lead Akshay Kothari on the LinkedIn blog.
“You don’t need to follow publishers or topics or anything. Just log in with your LinkedIn account, and Pulse instantly gives you today’s news based on the industry you work in, who you’re connected to and what you follow on LinkedIn. All these interactions will continuously refine your content recommendations.”
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Is the Native Content the Answer to Ad Blocking?
The growing issue of ad blocking is giving more publishers headaches across desktop and mobile devices, but TripleLift CEO Eric Berry believes that native content can circumvent the circumventing – which itself may block eyeballing but doesn’t always protect privacy.
Native ads earn higher RPMs, requiring fewer calls, Berry writes, while often taking up a smaller portion of the browser. Berry cites other native content qualities, but ultimately concedes that they can still be blocked like other ads – the key takeway is that a better, healthier, more ethical ad culture could mean a lessening tension with consumers and therefore a friendlier atmosphere for advertisers and publishers.
Are Publishers Too Pushy?
A recent column from Paolo Gaudiano in MediaPost addresses the issue of whether publishers can overdo it on mobile content strategy, particularly when it comes to newsletters and ad tactics on corresponding landing pages, which he admits are important for audience development … within reason.
“Sometimes, however, publishers appear so desperate to increase readership that they overstep their bounds, to the point of becoming downright annoying. Without naming names … I have seen two behaviors in particular that I find annoying,” Gaudiano writes.
“First, some sites fail to use cookies, or simply ignore them, and bombard me with takeover ads or pop-ups begging me to subscribe to their newsletter even if I visit the same site twice within a short time span, and even if I am already registered on that site and already subscribing to their newsletters. Second, and even more annoying, I have found some sites that show me the same persistent takeover ads even when I landed on their article by clicking a link from a newsletter to which I already subscribe.”
Is your mobile content strategy paying off? Share your experiences in the comments!
To read more about mobile content strategy in the news, visit MediaPost.
