eMarketer: Brand editorial sites find their place on mobile

Owned websites win the largest share of editorial spending on mobile

Recently, branded editorial media on mobile devices is attracting users. Data released by Sharethrough in June 2014 showed that in the first quarter of 2014, the interaction rate of branded editorial content promoted in the form of native and information flow ads on mobile phones through the company's "Sharethrough Exchange" was as high as 2.2%.

Looking at the different editorial media types, content residing on owned websites dominates spending, increasing 31% from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014 to account for 68%. While sponsored editorial media residing on professional publishers’ websites is seen as a much smaller share, it has seen significant growth in spending on mobile devices, while earned media – unpaid articles about brands – accounts for the remaining 3%.

Owned media is a broad category, and Sharethrough found that corporate blogs were the most popular type of site to run this content, accounting for nearly half of spending. Branded editorial sites – “a themed editorial site that uses a brand as part of its name and may exist within the branded corporate site or as a standalone URL” – and corporate websites received 23% of investment each.

But spending doesn’t tell the whole story, Sharethrough noted that earned media has the highest engagement rate, indicating that brands can extract higher value from this format. Meanwhile, sponsored media and owned media ranked second and third, respectively.

In August 2013, Sharethrough found that almost all US digital advertising experts believe that localized mobile advertising is very or somewhat effective for brand campaigns overall, and that spending on this channel is likely to grow in the coming years. According to data released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ovum in September 2013, 74% of US mobile marketers said that local mobile advertising is an important or very important mobile advertising development.

199IT compiled from emarketer