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Retail ad spending is speeding to mobile
There are few industries where mobile is having as big an impact as the disruption it is bringing to retailing. This should make publishers nervous. Very nervous.
Though the rising popularity of mobile commerce may be great for consumers and could be pretty good for merchants, the phenomenon poses a sharp challenge to newspaper publishers, who rely on retailers to generate half of the roughly $20 billion in print and digital advertising they are likely to sell this year. Here's why millions in newspaper advertising could be at risk:
Now that three-quarters of Americans have smart phones (tinyurl.com/ p6g8wj4), more than two-thirds of those consumers use their phones at some point in the shopping process (tinyurl.com/pv3zxyg). The Deloitte consulting group says that nearly a third of the $3.4 billion in U.S. retail sales in 2014 were either influenced by, or actually took place on, a small screen-a six-fold increase from smartphone-shopping activity in 2012 (tinyurl.com/qfhrx8y).
In the interests of intercepting mobileized shoppers as they search for products, read reviews, compare prices and eventually click to buy, retailers this year are expected to spend nearly twice as much on mobile advertising...