opinion

As It Turns Out, Mobile Traffic Now Trumps Desktop Traffic

Have you noticed the sponsorship trends over the last years?

You might have taken them for granted, but if you look back to past events you’ll see a definite growth in the involvement of mobile companies. From brands you’ve barely heard of to household names in the adult industry, more and more mobile businesses have been sponsors at shows, congresses and summits over the last years.

Mobile searches have grown by 500 percent in the past couple of years, while mobile data traffic is now 10 times the size of the entire global Internet at the start of the millennium.

Not only that, but entire days have been dedicated to mobile during these shows and in all probability adult mobile-only events are going to take center-stage in the next couple of years.

This isn’t a supposition; it’s a fact waiting to happen.

Proof on the matter is Google’s most recent algorithm update. Since February, the biggest search engine on the web has been announcing the launch of Mobilegeddon in the media, a SEO apocalypse designed to rank mobile-friendly websites higher in mobile searches.

It doesn’t sound like such a big thing at first, but when you remember that mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of all web traffic, the wheels start spinning.

Now, to continue keeping it factual, I am forced to say that despite being announced on April 21, Mobilegeddon is actually going to take some time to be properly implemented. Bugs have to be sorted out, issues have to be discovered and resolved and the entire World Wide Web has to be remapped. This is why you won’t see large differences in graphs on mobile traffic between the first weeks of April and the present day.

In this context, while we can’t really comment on the impact of Google’s algorithm, we can discuss the impact of its necessity. Why did we need Mobilegeddon? Well, in order to properly answer that we have to talk traffic.

I don’t want to bore you with too much info, but we do need to crunch some numbers to accurately visualize the current state of affairs.

Mobile searches have grown by 500 percent in the past couple of years, while mobile data traffic is now 10 times the size of the entire global Internet at the start of the millennium.

More and more users are “mobile-only,” which means they only surf the net on their smartphones or tablets. And to make things particularly clear, mobile traffic accounted for 61 percent of all web traffic at the beginning of 2015. In short, we’re way past the tipping point and mobile is the newest kingpin in the traffic cog.

In adult entertainment as well the switch is more than obvious with PornHub’s 2014 mobile traffic (smartphone and tablet) comprising 56 percent of their entire web traffic. That’s a 13 percent loss for desktop traffic in just one year.

As for the most important operating systems, Android is still at the top with Apple iOS fast behind it. Windows is picking up quickly and after the newest announcements at the Build 2015 conference, we can’t wait to see Microsoft becoming a bigger contender on the market.

Numbers aside, we need to take a look at configurations as well when drawing the big picture. Mobile devices themselves haven’t become so popular by accident. Hardware and software developers are competing against each other to launch better and better products, and conceptual developers are constantly on the search to find the perfect recipe to smart devices.

From block phones, which you basically build yourself and can upgrade in parts, to wearables and all the way to smart thermostats, we’re trying to connect to the Internet with every device in our household. On top of all of this, connections are faster, data is getting cheaper, smartphones are becoming more and more powerful and with bigger screens and capable operating system.

The ultimate goal when smart devices were launched was to be able to do anything on mobile that we could do on desktop — but better, faster, cheaper, anywhere and at any time. Well, we’re there, we’ve reached that goal in terms of technology. Now, all that’s left to do is get the entire Internet up-to-speed or watch parts of it wash away in the wave. And then, when that is done, we can focus on achieving more on mobile than we ever achieved on desktop.

Because of all these reasons and more, Mobilegeddon was necessary. You see, mobile has been taking over quietly but completely, and despite the obvious situation, 67 percent of fortune 100 companies have missed the bandwagon. They’re not mobile-friendly and they need a nudge in the right direction or they risk losing a third of their web traffic. Businesses focused on e-commerce in particular will lose profit directly.

Companies that were based on mobile from the get-go have a definite advantage and we here at BrokerBabe.com know that. We’ve been seeing the trends in both global web traffic and niched adult entertainment traffic for several years now and have been preparing accordingly. To properly convert mobile traffic you need to stay ahead of the game and that’s why we’ve been working hard on promo tools that are SEO-friendly, as well as great offers over Wi-Fi.

The possibilities are endless, but the graphs are changing on a daily basis, and mobile traffic is more than on the rise — it’s torpedoing skywards. This means huge boosts in revenue for traffic networks and affiliates, which are ready and capable of tackling the new kingpin. The question is: Are you ready for the mobile headway?

Stefan Mühlbauer is director of marketing and sales at BrokerBabe.com. If you are interested in the mobile world, contact him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/s.muehli.

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