Skimlinks Reveals That Smartphones Generate 20% of Impressions But Only 10% of Sales

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, Nov. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Skimlinks, the leading content monetization platform for digital publishers, today released "Mobile Trends in the Content Publisher Landscape", a study that examines what devices people use to read content, click ecommerce links and purchase goods online. The company has also launched a live dynamic table revealing how 200 of the top Skimlinks merchants support mobile commerce. Together, the study and table suggest that mobile sales may be trailing mobile impressions because merchants are not providing apps or mobile optimized websites.

As a company that processes over 300 million clicks per month for 1.5 million websites and apps, Skimlinks was in a unique position to study how impressions, clicks and purchases fluctuate across devices, publisher types and categories. The research team made several key discoveries:

• Although smartphones account for 20% of impressions, they only generate 10% of sales value
• Computers still generate 65% of sales value
• Tablets demonstrate the highest conversion rates (2%) as well as the highest sales value proportionally with 11% of impressions and 18% of sales value

"The discrepancy between smartphone impressions and sales suggested that merchants were somehow underserving consumers along the checkout process," said Lindsay O'Gorman, Senior Director of Marketing at Skimlinks. "This encouraged us to investigate further and see how our top merchants support mobile commerce."

The research team developed a live table that shows how 200 of the top merchants from the Skimlinks network treat mobile commerce. Research revealed that:

• 42% of the merchants do not have an iOS app
• 61% do not have an Android app
• 97% do not support deep-linking into their apps
• 11% do not have mobile optimized websites

Although Internet users are consuming much more content from their smartphones, the lack of mcommerce apps, mobile websites, deep-linking and incentives for publishers appears to be limiting mobile purchases.

"Merchants are probably losing conversions when they link mobile users to websites that aren't designed for mobile purchases," added O'Gorman. "They need to improve mobile checkout experiences and also reward publishers for driving purchase intent via mobile devices. This will motivate publishers to make quality commerce-driven content for all device types."     

For additional insights, as well as comparisons of which publisher types and categories drive the most impressions and commissions on each device, please download the full study at http://skimlinks.com/MobileLandscape/Mobiletrends. The live table of merchants is available at  http://skimlinks.com/MobileLandscape/Merchantsonmobile.

About Skimlinks

Founded in 2007, Skimlinks is the leading content monetization platform that rewards publishers for the role their content plays in creating purchase intent. Skimlinks processes 300 million clicks a month on over 1.5 million sites around the web, including Conde Nast, Gawker, Hearst Digital, Haymarket Consumer Media, Telegraph Media Group and many more. Last year, the company drove $500M worth of e-commerce through its platform. Skimlinks is a team of 65 with offices in London and San Francisco. Learn more at www.skimlinks.com.

SOURCE Skimlinks

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