February 4, 2013
Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star has launched a mobile site to let consumers stay on top of daily news.
The mobile site could be accessed at http://m.thestar.com/ and lets users make amends for the newspaper’s latest news. The mobile site is powered by Polar Mobile’s MediaEverywhere platform.
“The Star had an existing mobile presence via native mobile applications – mobile Web is a natural extension of this mobile presence,” said Kunal Gupta, CEO of Polar Mobile, Toronto.
“Their goal was to provide readers a best-in-class experience on several devices, which was made possible in the course of the new mobile Web page powered by MediaEverywhere,” he said.
Read on mobile
Content at the Toronto Star’s mobile site is free to consumers.
The site is ready up vertically in order that users scroll right down to read over the headlines quickly before clicking on a piece of writing.
The newest articles are identified with a banner within the top right-hand corner of article photos.
When users click a narrative, they will view article images and links to content inside articles.
Furthermore, a button inside the top right-hand corner of the screen lets users share content via Facebook, Twitter and email.
Additionally, article comments load along the underside of the positioning.
Users can swipe their finger around the screen from left to right to access a higher story within the news category.
The site aggregates sports, entertainment, lifestyle, business, opinion and native news.
Mobile publishers
The Toronto Star is sensible to take its content mobile with consumers increasingly using their mobile devices as their go-to device for reading news.
The trick is to maintain the reading experience clean and easy while also including features that give users an incentive to make use of their mobile devices.
In fact, if done correctly, mobile has the chance to extend content consumption, consistent with a up to date study from Pew Research.
The report found that 19 percent of adults who consume news on tablets are reading in-depth articles daily and 73 read in-depth articles a minimum of sometimes. Additionally, 49 percent of tablet news users and 50 percent of smartphone news users either sometimes or often notice ads on their mobile devices while reading news. (see story).
By extending advertising options to the positioning, The Toronto Star is ready to monetize its efforts.
The mobile site also ties closely with the publisher’s analytics and content infrastructure, per Polar Mobile.
“Most major publishers have already got some sort of mobile presence by now,” Mr. Gupta said.
“The focal point this year for many publishers might be to seek out additional opportunities to monetize their mobile content,” he said. “Native ads – the sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter are great early examples – will prove to achieve success in providing higher CPM’s for publishers.”
Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York