ABC Survey: Newspapers Have Big Plans For Mobile

mobile/newspaper

A new survey from the Audit Bureau of Circulations found great interest in mobile strategies for content distribution and advertising among print publishers, which also expect print distribution to diminish over the next decade.

According to the ABC survey of 375 print publishing execs, 52% of print publishers are already distributing content via mobile devices. Newspapers are in the vanguard, with 58% of publishers saying they have formatted their Web sites to make them mobile-friendly, or have created dedicated mobile Web sites.

Consumer magazines and business-to-business publications have also moved to enable mobile viewing of their Web sites, with 42% of the former and 45% of the latter saying they're already mobile-friendly.

Mobile distribution has proved effective for drawing more readers to sites, the survey found: 44% of respondents said their sites got a 10% boost after adopting mobile distribution. Also, 56% say they plan to create applications for "smart phones" in the near- to mid-term future (over the next two years).

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On the downside, while over three-quarters of respondents said they expect to still be producing a print publication five years from now, fully 24% said they didn't know if this would be the case.

Newspapers are under pressure to find new distribution and monetization strategies for their content. Last week, the Associated Press announced that all 28 of McClatchy Co.'s daily newspapers are joining the AP's mobile news network.

Separately, Gannett has acquired a stake in text4info, a mobile service that enables the newspaper publisher to leverage its directory information via mobile.

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