NewsBeat

14 NewsBeat February 2016 This was first published in the Mobile Media Memo newsletter. hese are going to sting a little. You ready? 1. It's going to get worse Mobile is disrupting all aspects of the media business — behavior, revenue and brand — and we have yet to experience the full extent of its bite. "I think things are probably much, much worse industry-wise than people acknowledge," The Awl's John Herrman explained to The Verge. "It is, to the web, what the web was to what came before it." This time, it's not just print in the crosshairs. It's everyone. 2. Everyone is a frenemy The friend vs. frenemy argument is absurd. Everyone is a frenemy these days, battling for the same eyeballs and the same revenue which advertisers pay to reach them. Technology companies are looking more like media companies, hiring their own editors. Some partnerships are complementary, others are substitutional, and it's increasingly difficult to decipher which is which. That's in large part because… 11 Hard Truths About Mobile Media 3. Opinions are drowning out facts In an industry that's more competitive and complex than ever, it's nearly impossible to get the straight scoop on anything. Companies are extremely protective of mobile performance metrics, and partnership details are secured under NDAs. Meanwhile, the explosion of user behavior data inside media companies creates its own cloud of confusion. There's so much data, you can pretty much justify any plan of action with the right subset of numbers. It's hard to know what's really working. Adding insult to injury, some pundits and tech writers are forming their own conclusions without any real data to support their opinions. They praise startups that aren't growing and criticize partnerships that are working. The net effect is a growing sense of confusion. 4. Faster, better and easier always win As history has shown us, users always gravitate toward user experiences that are faster, easier and better. And as an industry, they've gravitated away from us, consuming our content through superior mobile experiences. T More people get news from Facebook — 41% of U.S. adults — than any other source. That's because it's a faster, better and easier experience to get news. Told you this would sting. Sure, the tech giants have more resources, but let's be honest: our industry isn't known for obsessing about our users (for example, see "News sites are fatter and slower than ever.") Few media organizations practice human-centered design, product teams are a relatively new phenomenon and most mobile media products still do just one thing: display abbreviated content from a single brand. 5. Apps are better Let's stop calling them sites; they're apps. Facebook is an app. Twitter is an app. Snapchat is an app. Apple News is an app. Netflix is an app. Some of them also have sites that get a small fraction of their overall traffic (~ 15% for FB and Twitter), but the distribution disruption is driven almost entirely by apps and the ecosystems designed to make them flourish. Most of your web referrals are viewed in someone else's app. Apps are easier, faster and better for this sort of thing (Facebook "Instant Articles" is exhibit A), and apps are extending into new devices: wearables, TVs and cars, where web browsers are nowhere to be found. Apple and Google are incentivized to keep it that way. 6. Websites are in behavioral decline I hate browsing the web on my phone. Everyone does. Users don't type in URLs on their phones. They tap apps, they tap links in apps, they tap notifications, they search in the device's built-in search bar and they increasingly use Siri and Google Voice to search. When users are looking at a web page on a phone, they're almost always doing it inside an app (which they think is the app, not a website.) As mobile grows, user behavior is shifting from websites to apps as the entry points. Yes, we all love the openness of the web, but the industry needs to skip through the stages of grief to "acceptance" as quickly as possible. No, websites aren't dead. But they're in a steep decline By CORY BERGMAN

• Cover