Mobile-ready?

Executives in the monitoring field have advised magazine publishers to embrace mobile quickly — or risk being left in the dust, reports MediaPost.

The comments were made at the American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Florida.

Representatives from companies like Scanbuy, M:Metrics and others warned that ignoring mobile now would be even more harmful than had publishers ignored the internet in the early 1990s.

Only one-third of magazine titles, according to one speaker, have mobile programs in place.

Monetization of content was the focus of the comments. Speakers stressed utilizing advertising in some form, either via mobile ads or direct response units that tie print titles to the mobile web.

The quality of the mobile audience should be emphasized, according to Scanbuy's Jon Buckley, as much as the size of the audience.