Daily News goes for cross-platform approach as part of mobile strategy

By Giselle Tsirulnik

March 10, 2010

Daily News goes mobile

New York Daily News has taken a cross-platform approach to its mobile strategy with the launch of mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

The news giant hopes to launch applications for Android, Palm webOS and high-end Java smartphones in the near future. The Daily News�leveraged Handmark�s mobile publishing platform to launch across the widest range of mobile devices.

�The publishing industry as a whole is looking to mobile to its extend reach and for monetization, and this really is part of a wide spread effort,� said Evan Conway, executive vice president of marketing at Handmark. �This application is ad-supported.�

Top brands like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CBS News, Zagat and others have also leveraged Handmark for their mobile strategy.

Consumers can download the Daily News application by texting MOBILE to DNEWS (36397) or at http://www.nydailynews.com/mobile.

The Daily News mobile application provides consumers with instant, real-time access to the latest breaking news, sports, gossip, politics and columnists� opinions.�

Unlike Web sites that have been enhanced for mobile devices, the Daily News mobile application refreshes content automatically with no need to manually update.

The Daily News mobile application offers�easy-to-navigate tabs supporting an optimized reading experience from the mobile screen, including contextual photos as thumbnails with the headlines and in full screen views with captions.

Articles from the mobile application can be easily saved for later reading and shared via email and various social networking sites.

A customizable "My Feeds" tab also enables users to access their own preferred news and feature stories.

As of right now, there are just house ads running in the application.

"Generally speaking we can handle whatever advertising types advertisers will ask for,� Mr. Conway said. �Brands and marketers are mostly putting money towards the regular banner ads but we do offer click to call and other rich-media ad types.

�At launch there are no advertisers, but we expect it won�t be hard to get brands and marketers in,� he said.� �Right now Daily News is leveraging the application�s ad space to push its other properties.�

One of the house ads within the application offers users 70 percent off of morning home delivery.

The applications offer advertisers a wide range of targeting parameters, per Mr. Conway.

Advertisers can target by device type, location and of course by breaking down the demographic of users that read the Daily News.

�What is unique here is that the Daily News is one of the few publishers that went straight for the cross-platform approach,� Mr. Conway said. �It is not like most of the other publishers that went just for the iPhone first.

�Daily News wants to talk to the entire audience and not just 15-20 percent of mobile phone users,� he said.