Online publishers are always looking for an edge that will help bring traffic their way, but there is a lot to be said for sticking with the basics as well. The one basic rule that has been part of the publishing industry since it started is that you have to present information in a format that people are interested in utilizing. The idea that you have to go to where the readers are is what helped spur the transition from paper to digital content. That same idea is now getting specific within the digital publishing arena as mobile ad revenue is outpacing all other forms of ad revenue by a considerable margin.

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The Money Is In Mobile

According to ETTelecom.com, mobile advertising revenue grew an astounding 78 percent for the period from 2013 to 2014. That gives mobile advertising a 37 percent share of all digital advertising revenue and those numbers are going to continue to rise.

Interesting Pew Research Numbers

According to Journalism.org reporting on a Pew Research report released using numbers from January 2015, most of the top 50 online publishing websites indicated that mobile users outpaced desktop users. For popular sites such as NBC News, BuzzFeed, and the Daily Mail, the number of mobile users was nearly twice that of desktop users. What is interesting is that media outlets such as CNET.com and MSN News are going the other direction and reporting twice as many desktop users as they are mobile traffic.

What About Print?

While the majority of the digital media world is utilizing mobile devices to access information, the Pew Research Center also indicated that the days of print information on paper may not quite be numbered just yet. It was reported that 56 percent of the people who responded to the Pew Research survey said that they prefer getting their news from printed newspapers. It is also interesting to note that print advertising revenue in 2014 was at $16.4 billion, while digital advertising revenue clocked in at around $3.5 billion. The digital numbers are growing, but newspaper publishers are not too anxious to stop the presses just yet.

Mobile Is Still King Of The Hill

The top three digital publishing websites in terms of traffic for January 2015 were (in order starting with the first) Yahoo-ABC News, CNN, and NBC News. It is interesting to note that for all three of those digital media outlets, there was more mobile traffic than desktop traffic.

If you run a publishing website, then it is impossible to ignore the lure of mobile content. Instead of forcing your users to cram your standard content onto a mobile screen, you are going to have to start developing a mobile website that is fully functional and offers everything users are looking for. The simple fact is that if you do not create the kind of content mobile users are looking for, then you could be missing out on a considerable amount of advertising revenue.