Nowadays it seems as if everyone owns a smartphone or tablet they carry around and stare at all day. We are on our mobile devices a lot more often than we think we are; we constantly check our phones. We check to see if we have any new notifications from different social media platforms, we check to see if someone has texted us, we check our emails, we check different apps for news, and well, you get the point.
The way we check for information has changed over the past couple of years; consumers have gone mobile. It is a lot easier to check for news or information with a mobile device; everything we need to know is at our fingertips.
According to a study, mobile consumers spend about 5 percent of their time on searching and reading on news, current and global news. The study also showed that mobile users use social media sites as a source of news and information. This isn't surprising, we do not really need to go out and grab a newspaper or magazine or turn the television on when we have it all in our mobile phones. Some news channels even offer live streaming on their mobile app.
The way that these mobile users are using social media platforms as a news source is by scrolling down their feeds, for example Facebook or Twitter, and then becoming part of the news story by commenting on the issue being presented or by sharing it.
According to the findings from this PEW study, 44 percent of the 67 percent of U.S adults on Facebook, get their news from the social media site, as you can also see below. YouTube comes in second place with 10 percent and Twitter coming in third place with 9 percent.
Some social media platforms have been using geolocation to tailor news that are near their audience and therefore relevant. Snapchat is a great example, they use your location to show what is going on within the area you are in. for example, if you are in Los Angeles you will be able to see a story with things happening within the Los Angeles Area.
Snapchat also posts many news stories that are placed at the top of the “Stories” page. Here are some examples:
Because of this shift in mobile usage, advertisers are changing the way they post their ads and content. Advertisers or marketers have switched to native ads, which is a type of online advertising where companies place their content on other sites by paying for them. This content is relevant and has some type of value to the consumers.
Twitter is a social media platform that has many native ads. When scrolling down your feed, you will randomly see a promoted tweet; sometimes these tweets look just like a normal tweet from someone you follow. Take a look below, these are some examples of the promoted tweets from Verizon and Honda I found while scrolling down my Twitter feed.
YouTube is also a great example of native ads; a majority of the time there will be some type of featured ad when you watch a video. There are not many sites that can capture your attention with ads the way YouTube does. These ads are usually very relevant to the user and businesses can potentially acquire many new customers this way. Here is an example of what a YouTube sponsored ad looks like:
This ad appeared as I clicked to watch a video on photography editing, which is somewhat relevant to the photography editing topic.
So to summarize, the shift to mobile devices has changed the way users gather information and advertisers and marketers have been using new techniques to appeal to their audiences.
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