Apps fuel journalism's second disruption
(Updated 7/29) - Whenever I talk to journalists about the mobile shift, they’re quick to defend the web over mobile apps. After all, the web is what the news industry knows best after years of playing digital catch up.
This bias has played out in product development. Many news organizations (even some new startups) have opted to invest more resources into responsive web design over creating and marketing compelling apps. In large part, that’s because good, differentiated apps are much more expensive to build, market and maintain. In the world of limited resources, what we know gets the attention.
But with each new study on mobile consumption, it’s becoming clearer that apps are not only winning, but dominating the field at the expense of the web. Sure, the desktop web is now in decline, but a new report by Comscore goes as far as saying the mobile web is flattening in share.
From October 2013 to May of this year – just 7 months time – mobile apps grew from 41% to 51% share of all time spent with digital media. Over the same time period, the mobile web remained flat at 9%, according to Comscore. Apps are driving the overwhelming majority of digital media growth.
Comscore broke it down by a few properties. For Gannett, for example, the split is nearly even: smartphone users spend 54% of their time on a Gannett website compared to 46% in a Gannett app. For The Weather Channel, users spend only 13% of their time on Weather.com compared to 87% in the app. And just 6% of Facebook users’ time is spent on Facebook.com on their phones.
The trend is echoed in a global study by Reuters Institute. Researchers found that 47% of smartphone users say they primarily use apps for news – an increase of 6% over 2013. By contrast, 38% of users say they prefer the browser for news, down 4% over the same year.
News organizations with languishing apps are quick to point out that their website substantially outperforms their app. Not to mention, they expain, mobile revenue is non-existent. But that’s a self-fulfilling strategic mistake: resource allocation decisions should be based on where consumers are going, not where they’ve been. The less you invest in apps, the more poorly they perform. And history has taught us, where consumers go, the money will follow. It’s already happening – fast.
Waiting until the dust settles may prove to be fatal. While app use explodes, “the average number of apps owners used had barely risen over the past two years, from 23.2 in Q4 2011 to 26.8 in Q4 2013,” explained eMarketer, citing Nielsen data. Loyalties are forming, and it’s becoming even more difficult than ever to crack into the app business this late in the game.
Adding fuel to the fire, Facebook and other social apps continue to gain share and solidy their own loyal user bases as de facto destinations for news. At the same time, people are visiting home pages less, coming in social side doors. If you don’t have a solid app, you’re handing over the front door on the fastest growing distribution platform to someone else. Those who own the front doors can gather user data and by extension monetize at scale. (Sound familiar?)
Even Buzzfeed, which helped write the book on social discovery and referrals, understands the destination value of apps. On any given day, its app is neck-and-neck with CNN in the App Store (a big investment), and the app’s tremendous growth helped Buzzfeed vault over NYTimes in total visitors several months ago.
But that’s just the beginning. According to a job posting, Buzzfeed is assembling a “crack team to imagine a build a new kind of news app,” in addition to its current mobile team. While everyone talks about Buzzfeed’s social exploits, the startup is doubling down on mobile apps.
For those news organizations investing heavily in apps, the benefits are starting to become clear. Once you start growing a loyal app audience, users consume and share content much more frequently – in many cases, exponentially more than web users. Users are more comfortable sharing data with apps that adapt to their needs, laying the groundwork for targeted advertising and a sustainable business.
If you’re good at apps, you’ve built a strong foundation to extend to new platforms that don’t run on browsers. At Breaking News, for example, our apps work seamlessly with wearables with minimal work (see an example on Android Wear). As Apple, Android and Amazon push into living rooms, video apps naturally extend to TV sets with strong ties to mobile devices. In a similar fashion, digital displays in cars all run on apps, not browsers.
A year and a half ago, I urged newsrooms to aggressively invest in mobile to avoid – even profit – from the second disruption. Now the disruption is here, and while the mobile web is still important, apps are leading the growth curve on mobile and beyond. News organizations have to fight a battle on both fronts, realizing that good apps require a tremendously larger and more patient investment than a mobile-friendly site. Similar to the first disruption, those who don’t invest enough will be left behind.
(Updated 7/29 to include the Reuters Institute study and Buzzfeed job posting.)