Mobile Web and the Feed Are All That Matters

It is conventional wisdom that it is vital to have a "mobile strategy" but what about the more extreme position: mobile is all that matters. At BuzzFeed our mobile traffic has grown from 20% of monthly unique visitors to 40% in under a year. I see no reason why this won't go to 70% or even 80% in couple years. Maybe faster. We routinely see 50% of our Youtube content views come from mobile have had some videos get 70%+ of their views on mobile.

And mobile web, for most publishers and brands will be where all of this consumption occurs. Flurry recently released a report showing that the Facebook app on iOS alone accounts for 18% of time spent on devices. Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin will be where the vast majority of users discover links your editorial or branded content, which means users will click that link and arrive to you via a mobile web browser. Not via an app.

And on mobile devices, users like to scroll through feeds of information. The success of Facebook and Twitter as mobile apps validates this point, and one could argue that the elongation of the iPhone 5 is further testament to this fact.

This means you need to design for a feed, and if you are brand, native content, in the feed is increasingly how you will need to reach users. For example, here's a screen grab I just took of the BuzzFeed mobile web experience, and a "mobile story unit" we are running for Vitamin Water:

How dramatic is all this? People love their devices so much that there is now a network that our CEO Jonah Peretti has called "The Bored in Line Network" comprised of people rapidly sharing and consuming content while standing on lines at stores and other places. This network is so real that gum sales are down $3.5 billion and magazine sales are down 8.2% as people consume and share content on their phones while waiting to checkout at grocery stores rather than making impulse purchases from nearby racks.

And mobile means social, because mobile is increasingly the primary way millennials consume and share content. Luckily, for brand marketers, native social content works in the feed. Facebook has found that ads in newsfeed have only decreased comments and likes by around 2%. At BuzzFeed, we've found people click branded content in our feed at rates 10x to 20x the rate they click banners, and share branded content at rates resulting in 30%+ earned media.

So mobile means social, mobile means the feed is increasingly going to be the way people engage with the web, and for brand marketers mobile increasingly means social, content-driven advertising in the feed is both the now and the future.

Photo: Tara Moore/Taxi/Getty Images