NEW YORK ? A Forbes Media executive at Mobile Marketing Summit: Wearables and Holiday Focus 2015 revealed that 40 percent of the company?s traffic today comes from readers on mobile devices, compared to six percent just four years ago, proving mobile?s cachet with news-hungry millennial consumers.

During the ?Forbes Media: How Forbes is Adapting to a Mobile-First Future? session, the executive discussed the importance of churning out mobile-optimized content as readership on personal devices, including tablets and smartphones, continues its meteoric rise. Forbes experiences heavy mobile traffic seven days of the week, while desktop traffic tends to be confined to workdays only, signaling that all publications should take note of this insight.

?Today we?re at a point where social media has collided with mobile,? said Ann Marinovich, vice president of advertising products and strategy at Forbes Media, Jersey City, NJ. ?Mobile is at the center of everything we do.

?Forbes, over the course of the last five years, has really thought hard about how we embrace that.?

Mobile Marketer organized the Mobile Marketing Summit: Holiday Focus 2015.

Mobile-first mindset
Forbes sees more than 40 percent of its traffic stemming from mobile devices these days, as opposed to six percent four years ago. This considerable jump may be attributable to the increasing size of small screens, as well as the on-the-go nature of millennials and other consumers who prefer consuming bite-sized pieces of news.

One learning that Forbes revealed was that mobile users are twice as likely to visit its site from social media than are desktop users. Furthermore, desktop readers tend to come to Forbes.com during the business day.

Mobile traffic picks up steam during lunch hours and evenings.

?People come to mobile seven days a week, whereas desktop is concentrated Monday to Friday,? Ms. Marinovich said.

Sixty-eight percent of the media brand?s mobile audience rests between the ages of 18 and 44.

?They?re a younger audience; they?re coming back to Forbes on their smartphone numerous times during the day and they?re also in market for automotive, consumer electronics [content],? Ms. Marinovich said. ?They have an affinity for social media and gaming, and they?re reading a lot of very different content.?

Niche vertical apps
Forbes Media recently undertook a strategy to resonate with the millennial crowd by bringing its Under 30 community together in an exclusive LinkedIn-type mobile application that uses Tinder technology in an attempt to legitimize the editorial feature and drive engagement with the millennial demographic (see story).

The partnership with Tinder currently functions as a brand-building scenario rather than a monetization strategy.

While Forbes? primary focus remains on the mobile Web experience, its app strategy centers on creating niche vertical apps.

The Under 30 application is a prime example of how millennials are willing to relinquish precious smartphone real estate for an application that offers relevance to their lives.

Additionally, Forbes Media?s acquisition of Camerama, a private photo-sharing app, may help the publisher of Forbes Magazine engage consumers on mobile through new products alongside its core editorial operation, as revenue remains a fraction of what it was in the heyday of print (see story).

?A big challenge is how you engage that consumer on a smaller device knowing that the experience on mobile is different than on desktop,? Ms. Marinovich said. ?Our belief is that people are going to consume content on their mobile device.?

Final Take
Ann Marinovich is vice president of advertising products and strategy at Forbes Media, Jersey City, NJ