Push the right buttons: Publishers leaning more toward mobile, apps, push notifications (new report)

Sep 18, 2024

Publishers looking to expand their audiences — a classification that could just as easily be shortened nowadays to “publishers” — would do well to consider the doors and opportunities that mobile publishing opens, according to Pugpig’s latest report.

“Pugpig data shows that publishers have better success in engaging young audiences with their apps than their websites,” says the State of Mobile Publishing Market Report, which surveyed 72 publishers that use its platform to better illustrate mobile publishing’s potential and digital publishing’s future. With mobile’s consumer time and attention either rising or holding steady across the globe, what apps can do to attract and engage audiences (particularly younger audiences) is worth publishers’ time.

“It’s clear from the data that apps do not serve large audiences,” the report says. “In fact, for even the most successful publisher, apps make up a remarkably small percentage of their overall digital readership. However, when viewed through the lens of the percentage of the subscriber base who use a publisher’s app, you come to see the role that apps play for publishers’ most engaged and loyal audiences.”

The report recommends publishers should focus on the proportion of subscribers who regularly use them and monitor key engagement metrics to better measure an app’s success. While valued for its stickiness and frequency of use — particularly for news media apps, according to Pugpig’s research — apps are being used “increasingly as a means to acquire subscribers,” specifically with registration and trial subscription offers.

“This gives users an opportunity to sample the content and features to encourage them to buy a subscription,” the report says of efforts that provide the added bonus of collecting first-party data. “As first-party data and reader revenue continue to grow in importance, publishers have begun investing more in building products that properly fulfill the needs of their readers.”

Other engagement drivers like digital editions and push notifications were also given spotlight in Pugpig’s report, as “apps with digital editions see four times more screens per session, 25% more sessions per user per month and 2.5x longer average session duration than those without them.”

B2B publishers saw the highest percentage of users who would open a push notification (37%), followed by news media (29%), despite the higher number of notifications sent by news media. Consumer media saw a 14% user-open rate.

“Data and advice from push notification providers suggest that higher engagement is possible with segmented push notifications,” the report says, adding it saw a 60% increased engagement in apps by those who started using push notifications.

“Publishers are achieving this using push notifications providers’ preference centers to allow users to choose the topics they receive push notifications about. Consumer media publishers have an opportunity to increase the frequency of their pushes to increase engagement with them and with their apps.”