Revenue is necessary to our business, and advertisers can be considered a different kind of customer for us. Thinking about mobile Web — which likely has more casual readers than the loyalist, likely subscribers that apps bring — means advertising is likely the predominant revenue stream. 

So here are a few things we learnt during a recent INMA master class:

Advertising does not need to be above the fold in the first view to be effective. And while a pop-up may be sold for more, it’s often a huge, negative interruption to the reader experience.

We saw countless examples — The New York Times, NTM, Onet.pl — who showed that if you can improve the experience and scroll depth, you will get more revenue.

Here are the golden rules of advertising on mobile Web:

• Ads should fit with your content in terms of size and style. See how The New York Times has square ads that fit their columns, and they have gone one step further to create ‘flex fit” ads that align more with content formats (more about those here). 

• Images should lead, in the same way we have seen visuals work for all content.

• Ensure the ads work to constraints with speed load so both site load and viewability are improved. 

• If you can combine ad spots with first-party data, you can push prices up and lead to better ad relevance for consumers and effectiveness for advertisers.

If you’d like to subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter, INMA members can do so here.

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