• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, May 15, 2012

When you are sitting on an eponymous URL like Dictionary.com, you are the place where everyone goes to make sure they are using a word like “eponymous” correctly. Well -- actually, even after visiting Dictionary.com about this one, I remain queasy about the correct usage. Although I guess my point is made.

But according to CEO Shravan Goli, this brand can be just as much an advantage as a straightjacket. The company is celebrating its 50-millionth app download this month, with presence across all major smartphone platforms, the mobile Web and even a Windows 8 beta app that recently launched.

About 70% of their mobile traffic comes from apps, with the remainder from the mobile Web, Goli tells me. Mobile page views are up 65.5% over last year, increasing almost four times faster than Web growth. Mobile visits are on a similar trajectory. There are about 15 million monthly users just on mobile, he tells me.

But for all that, Goli admits, “the challenge and the opportunity for us now is to break out of the narrow identification as a word look-up.”

This week, Dictionary.com launches Word Dynamo for iPad. This is a game-meets-vocabulary engine that allows users to see approximately how many words they know and then build on that score through a series of exercises aimed at different grade levels and topics. Over 2 million users have played with the Word Dynamo product at Dictionary.com, and this app allows the user to mobilize their account and play and learn across screens. “Our idea is that learning should be continuous and fun,” says Goli.

About 60% to 70% of the Dictionary.com registered user base are either students or their parents, so Goli and co. are cultivating an established and loyal audience in developing new products. The companion product Writing Dynamo is currently online and in development for the iPad as well. “The goal for us is to transform Dictionary.com into an education media company,” says Goli.

But in the end, it still is a media company. While some of these spinoff educational products like Word Dynamo are paid apps, much of the business is relying on monetizing pages via advertising -- a still-slow slog toward monetization. Goli uses ad network mainly to fill inventory. He is pleased with the performance of iAds as well as the fill rates in particular. And he continues to see Android lag. “We have only seen marginal improvements if any,” he says. “Advertising continues to be challenging on Android. Platform growth has been phenomenal. It is anomalous. The users are there, but not the monetization.” He attributes some of this to fragmentation and variable form factors that make it difficult to know how an ad will appear.

Actually, in generating both a broader range of paid-revenue opportunities and reimagining its mission, Dictionary.com reflects the ways that mobile -- and apps in particular -- should be helping media companies rethink what they do. Apps are unique in that they bring a functionality and a mobility that has always eluded the Web publishing paradigm.

For all the emphasis on “interactivity” online, there has always been a sense that it is a glorified publishing or re-broadcast platform to most traditional media. Yeah -- they get e-commerce (kinda), and they get social media (sorta) -- but it is still mostly about media. Apps offer companies the opportunity to rethink themselves as real utilities -- more service and application-oriented than merely content-oriented.