How to Better Monetize Your Mobile Traffic

Just about every publisher out there making money from affiliate marketing or display advertising realizes that a growing portion of their traffic is coming from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. But most of them have done very little to make sure their site is prepared to efficiently handle (and monetize) the traffic that comes from sources besides desktop computers.With mobile now accounting for nearly 30% of total traffic (and growing), this group is potentially leaving quite a bit of money on the table each month by failing to properly service their mobile traffic. Let's dive in to the process for checking your site's mobile monetization health, starting with gaining an understanding of how much mobile traffic you currently get and how much money you're making from these visitors.

How Much Mobile Traffic Do You Get?

If your site has Google Analytics set up, it's easy to see just how much traffic you get from mobile devices. From your main dashboard, go to:Audience >> Mobile >> OverviewYou'll see something like this that breaks down the percentage of traffic you get from the three primary sources (desktop, mobile, and tablet):Odds are, your mobile and tablet traffic is higher than you think. (For MonetizePros.com, desktop traffic accounts for only about 80% of total visits.) This exercise should get you thinking: how does this segment of your audience experience your site? Is it easy to navigate, or is it a sub-optimal presentation that leaves quite a bit to be desired?There are a few metrics in this report that will help you figure this out:

• Bounce Rate: This refers to the percentage of visitors who land on your site, but leave without going beyond the landing page. (A high bounce rate is bad.) Though bounce rates for mobile traffic will generally be higher than desktop, a big gap (or a bounce rate of more than 50%) could be a sign of trouble.
• Pages / Visit: This one is pretty obvious. A low page-per-visit ratio is bad; if this metric is considerably lower for your mobile traffic, there could be an issue.
• Avg. Visit Duration: This one is also pretty obvious. If mobile and tablet visitors aren't spending much time on your site, they're not having a good experience and are unlikely to monetize well. (They're not going to click on an ad if they don't hang around for long.) The absolute figure here isn't as important as the relative length compared to your desktop traffic.

Coming up with a rule of thumb to indicate an issue with mobile monetization here is tricky; if there are large variances in the three metrics above between desktop and non-desktop, you should think about why that might be.

How Well Does Your Mobile Traffic Monetize?

The next step in evaluating the success of your mobile monetization efforts involves reviewing the current stats on this traffic segment. To do this, follow these steps:AdSense Home >> Performance Reports >> PlatformsYou'll get something that looks like this, breaking down the performance of each segment:This shows you how well your mobile traffic is turning into display advertising revenue; you'll be able to see click rates, the revenue earned for each click, and the overall earnings for every 1,000 pageviews (RPM). If the mobile line items in this report show click rates and overall RPMs well below your desktop traffic, this could be a sign of trouble (and big opportunity).

Eyeball Test: Is There A Problem?

If you want to see how your site renders in mobile devices (and get some visual input into your assessment of any monetization issues), you can obviously use your smartphone or tablet to check it out. In addition, there are some free services out there that let you see how your site looks on various mobile devices. Mobile Phone Emulator is pretty easy to use and includes several device options; MobileTest.me is also quick, easy, and free.It becomes obvious pretty quickly if your site has mobile browser issues; if you've never thought about the mobile issue before, odds are that your site will be difficult to read and navigate on a smaller screen. Take a look below at the mobile site for CNN, which is easy to navigate and read, next to the mobile site for a less polished site that is basically the desktop site on a smaller scale:The content is much easier to view on the first example above, which will lead mobile visitors to stick around. Just as importantly, the ads are easy to view and properly scaled to the size of the screen; in the second example, it's very difficult to read the ads without zooming in and moving the viewable window around.The result is likely sub-optimal monetization; mobile visitors can't easily digest the content, which likely leads to lower interaction and higher bounce rates. And those that do stick around can't even really see what the ads are for. (At this point, it should be obvious that optimizing your site for mobile revenue generation will generally also lead to a major improvement in the user experience for a big chunk of your traffic.)

How to Improve Mobile Monetization

While each site will be different, there are a few pretty standard solutions for these issues:

Step #1: Responsive Design and Mobile Sites

If you've decided that there's an opportunity to improve your site's mobile appearance, you have a couple routes from which to choose. One is implementing a responsive design, a concept that involves using proportion-based grids to create a site that can easily and automatically adjust to its viewing environment (i.e., the screen on which it's being viewed).Another option is to create a second version of your site specifically for mobile browsers, also known as a mobile website. This approach generally has the same end result: your site will render in a clean, easily readable format on non-desktop devices.There's been plenty written on the merits of responsive design versus a mobile site; read through what others have written on the topic to determine which route makes the most sense for your site.

Step #2: Responsive Ads

Google recently unveiled the concept of responsive ad units within its AdSense product, another development that can help to ensure that those viewing your site on a smartphone or tablet see ads that are scaled properly with their screen.Here are a couple good resources for implementing responsive ad units on your mobile site.

Step #3: Mobile-Specific Ad Partners

Some of the biggest mobile monetization wins may be beyond AdSense. There are a number of ad networks that specialize in providing mobile-friendly ad units, both within your mobile site and as pop-ups or banners that are overlaid above the content. The potential ad networks are too numerous to review here, so we'll highlight a few good lists instead. Our 101 Ways to Make Money with Your iPhone, Android, or Mobile App also has some more detailed reviews.

Bottom Line

You can't ignore mobile traffic any more; this segment accounts for an increasingly large portion of your traffic, and the efficiency with which you're able to monetize it now has a meaningful impact on your bottom line. If you have a mobile monetization problem (and there's a potentially big payoff for improving), take the required steps to make your site (and your ads) more mobile friendly!