As mobile-first consumption reshapes the media landscape, broadcasters must transform their workflows to meet the demands of a digital-native audience. Those who innovate today will define the future of news tomorrow.

The news industry is experiencing a profound transformation as mobile-first content consumption takes center stage. Audiences increasingly rely on their smartphones for real-time updates, pushing broadcasters to rethink traditional workflows that were once designed exclusively for linear television. This shift is not merely a change in platform; it's a redefinition of how news is created, distributed, and experienced.

The Rise of Mobile-First News Consumption
Mobile-first consumption has been accelerating for years, and recent data underscores its dominance. In the last quarter of 2024, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 62.5% of global website traffic. In the United States, mobile accounted for 65.8% of all digital ad spending in 2024, highlighting the clear shift toward mobile platforms. For news organizations, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

Major networks are making significant investments to stay competitive. For example, CNN invested $70 million into its digital transformation, prioritizing mobile-friendly, on-demand content. This trend is driven by a younger, mobile-first generation of news consumers who expect instant access to personalized, bite-sized content.

Meeting these expectations requires more than just repurposing linear TV content; it demands rethinking the entire content lifecycle—an overhaul that prioritizes speed, platform optimization, and audience engagement.

Overcoming Challenges with Legacy Workflows
Adapting to mobile-first news consumption is not a simple task. Traditional broadcast workflows are heavily optimized for large-screen, scheduled programming. In contrast, mobile consumption demands content that is easily reformatted, quickly distributed, and personalized for individual viewing habits.

The challenge lies in transforming legacy workflows that are often siloed and rigid. In the past, content was produced for a single format and distributed to a single platform. Today, audiences expect content to be available across multiple platforms in a variety of formats, including vertical video optimized for smartphones. For broadcasters to remain relevant in this rapidly changing, mobile-first era, they must adapt to efficiently reformatting and delivering content in real-time.

One significant barrier to this adaptation is the segmentation of content across different departments and platforms that exist within news production organizations. Traditional newsrooms often maintain very separate teams and process for linear broadcasting from digital production, resulting in duplicated efforts and slower distribution speeds.

To truly embrace mobile-first strategies, news organizations must break down these silos, enabling seamless content flow from creation to distribution. This approach not only accelerates time-to-market but also enhances audience reach by ensuring the efficient optimization of content for every screen. Broadcasters which fail to transform risk losing their competitive edge, especially as younger audiences continue to embrace mobile-first habits.​

The Role of AI in Modernizing News Workflows
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a critical tool in modernizing news workflows. Through automation, AI enables broadcasters to optimize content for various platforms without the need for manual intervention. This capability is crucial for keeping up with the pace of mobile consumption.

One key area where AI is driving innovation is in content personalization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze audience behavior and preferences to deliver targeted news updates, ensuring that stories are relevant and engaging. Furthermore, AI-driven automation can reformat content dynamically—whether it's vertical video for mobile or curated feeds for personalized viewing experiences.

For example, AI can identify trending topics and automatically curate video snippets from existing longer-form video, optimized for mobile consumption. This reduces the time required for manual editing and accelerates the speed at which breaking news reaches audiences anytime on any device. In an era where immediacy is critical, this capability is redefining what it means to be first with the story.

AI is also instrumental in multilingual distribution, automatically translating and reformatting content for different regions and demographics. This enables global reach with localized precision, ensuring that audiences receive news in their preferred language and format almost instantaneously.

The Shift Toward Vertical Video
One of the most significant transformations in mobile-first news consumption is the rise of vertical video. Traditionally, news content was produced in landscape format, optimized for television screens. However, as mobile devices have become the primary medium for news consumption, vertical video is rapidly emerging as the preferred format.

Vertical video is not just a change in aspect ratio; it represents a shift in audience behavior. Mobile users expect to engage with news content seamlessly as they scroll through social media feeds and news apps. This expectation is pushing broadcasters to rethink content strategies, ensuring stories are not only mobile-optimized but also immersive and interactive.

Leading news organizations are experimenting with mobile-first video formats, creating live streams, interactive news updates, and social-first clips designed for vertical consumption. This evolution marks a departure from traditional broadcast storytelling, moving toward dynamic, real-time engagement with audiences.

The demand for instant, mobile-optimized news is only expected to grow, and vertical video stands at the forefront of that shift. For newsrooms willing to adapt, this format offers unprecedented opportunities to engage viewers directly where they are - on their mobile screens.

Embracing the Mobile-First Era
The mobile-first era is not merely a trend; it is a redefinition of how news is consumed, shared, and trusted. Broadcasters that can seamlessly adapt to these new demands— producing vertical video, personalizing content, and optimizing distribution – will not just remain competitive; they will lead the next wave of media evolution. The path forward requires more than adaptation; it demands innovation, foresight, and a willingness to break from traditional molds.

In this mobile-centric landscape, those who prioritize mobile platform-native storytelling and agile content strategies will set the standard for the future of news. The question is no longer whether mobile-first consumption will dominate, it's about who will lead the revolution. For forward-thinking newsrooms, the opportunity to define the next era of media is here, and the time to act is now.

NEW YORK—The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is calling for a notable change in the way TV viewing is measured by proposing a “gradual migration” away from “TV households” to “TV-accessible (TVA) households” as the basis of TV measurement. 

The move reflects an ongoing shift in the way TV content is viewed and the fact that a growing number of homes view TV content on mobile devices without owning a TV. Making the change would capture currently unmeasured viewing on mobile devices by viewers that tend to skew younger. 

In making the recommendation, ARF cited data showing that 14% of households headed by an 18- to 34-year-old have no TV set, and a whopping 39% of single 18- to 24-year-olds living alone access TV through devices only.

That data comes from ARF’s comprehensive TV universe study, DASH, the 2022 version of which was recently released. Developed in conjunction with NORC at the University of Chicago and a panel of industry experts, DASH is based on a survey of more than 10,000 adults conducted online, in-person and by phone. DASH uses a national probability sample to produce reliable, projectable results.

The traditional basis of measurement, TV Households, counts households with at least one television set. DASH 2022 shows that 5% of US households do not own a TV set, but the majority of those, roughly 4% of US households, have broadband access and consume TV on devices through streaming services and virtual MVPDs. 

Using TV-accessible (TVA) households as the basis of measurement includes this emerging segment of TV-set-less TV watchers, the ARF said. 

“This trend towards devices also holds true for audiences that do have a television set in the household – across age and marital status demographics,” said Paul Donato, chief research officer at the ARF. “Forty-one percent of consumers with television sets reported watching professionally produced programming on a device the previous day. These dynamics highlight the problems with cross-device measurement today. This finding in particular dilutes the ‘representativeness’ of ACR streams and makes calibration with a reference standard like DASH essential for effective measurement.”

The steep rise in penetration of broadband only (BBO) households, from 25% to 31% in the last year, and the ubiquity of mobile devices with high-quality screens suggest strongly that this segment will only grow, the group said. 

The data set, which provides users a cohesive understanding of TV, device, media and ecommerce usage at both the individual and household levels, also found that:

• Television set brands impact room placement and co-viewing, with implications for media measurement and delivery: Television sets made by major brands are more likely to show up in the living room, media room and den, while less expensive television set brands are more likely to be placed in a bedroom. TV sets in living and media rooms are more likely to be co-viewed, while those in bedrooms are likely to have viewers from specific generations of the family. These location dynamics are important for brands to consider, especially as TV manufacturers build out FAST networks and sell their own ACR data for measurement.
• “Portfolio” dynamics appear in Americans’ adoption of streaming TV services. More than three-quarters of US TVA households now have portfolios of two or more streaming services, and fully half have four or more. Despite the proliferation of choices, Netflix remains a “core holding” in most portfolios. 
• The rise in AVOD (ad-supported) services has added a new dimension. Counterintuitively for some, the more streaming services a household has, the more likely there is to be at least one AVOD service in the mix. The majority (65%) of households with fewer than three streaming services have remained exclusively SVOD. On the other end of the spectrum, 69% of households with five or more services have at least one AVOD service in their portfolios. 
• Topline data from the first longitudinal DASH sample showed that 32% of households cut back on premium streaming services, while 39% added more to their portfolios. Thirty-six percent added ad-supported services. Data from the second longitudinal sample, in DASH 2023, will enable a more robust analysis of portfolio-building dynamics and switching, especially between SVOD and AVOD tiers.
• Churn between Pay TV and broadband only (BBO) goes both ways, but BBO has the edge: The DASH 2022 sample contained 3,141 respondents who also participated in the 2021 survey, enabling longitudinal observation of shifts in household subscriptions from a unified base. Analysis of this sample shows that 76% of households with pay TV in 2021 remained pay TV households in 2022, while 20% dropped pay and shifted to broadband only between 2021 and 2022. Conversely, 18% of the households that were BBO in 2021 picked up a pay TV subscription in 2022. While those percentages are close, pay TV in 2021 had a much bigger base than broadband only. BBO penetration increased by a net 6 points, mostly from households that dropped pay TV, the group said. 

The evolution of DASH will be explored in a session entitled, “DASH: Building a New Standard in TV,” at the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE event on April 25.

For more information about DASH and licensing opportunities, visit: https://thearf.org/dash/.

DULLES, Va.—The amount of time spent watching video on mobile devices grew during the course of the pandemic, according to new data from Global Wireless Solutions, with streaming services and other video platforms drawing consumers' attention.

GWS’ “The Pandemic Year in Mobile Apps” revealed that consumers spent an average of four hours a day on their smartphones, and about 42 minutes of that time was spent watching video.

One of the things that consumers watched were the mobile app versions of new streaming services. Since its launch in May 2020, time spent on the HBO Max mobile app has grown 513%, per GWS. Disney+, meanwhile, has grown 92% in mobile viewing time.

Other popular apps were the live streaming platform Twitch, which saw a total time spent on its app increase by 91% over the last year, and YouTube, which grew by 12%.

Some consumers earned the label “videophiles” from GWS, which it describes as power users of video streaming apps. These videophiles spent an average of 156 minutes per day watching videos on their mobile devices. About 31 minutes of that would be on subscription-based mobile video apps, while 115 minutes per day was on YouTube.

Not overly surprisingly, the largest growth of video viewing on mobile apps came from Gen Z (44%), but Baby Boomers also increased their mobile viewing time by about 10%, GWS reports.

For more information on the GWS report, visit www.gwsolutions.com.  

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Mobile video continued its strong growth in the third quarter of 2017, according to the Q3 2017 Global Video Index report from Ooyala, and that trend seems poised to continue into 2018.

The report found that Q3 2017 saw a record high of 58 percent of video plays globally occurred on mobile devices, the sixth consecutive quarter where mobile devices made up 50 percent or more of all online video starts. Following that trends, Ooyala predicts that by mid-2018, more than 60 percent of all video plays will be on mobile devices.

Another key finding from the report was the use of mobile devices to view long-form video. Long-form time-watched grew nearly 77 percent on smartphones and nearly 70 percent for tablets in Q3 2017 compared to Q3 2016. Medium-form video consumption saw a decline, per the report.

One area of interest in the report was the use of mobile devices to watch sporting events. Mobile devices accounted for 58 percent of online sports viewing, with smartphones being used more than 46 percent of the time and tablets more than 11 percent of the time. Related findings included:

• 18 to 49-year-old males were the largest adopters of online video via smartphones;
• Video was played on smartphones four-times more than on tablets, setting a record high of 51.1 percent in July;
• Mobile accounted for nearly 63 percent of all Q3 sports-video plays, with viewing on smartphones above 50 percent and tablets at 12 percent; PCs make up 35 percent of plays and connected TVs less than 3 percent;
• Mobile devices accounted for nearly two-thirds of all viewers of geo-blocked sporting events; smartphones remained the device of choice with more than 51 percent of users.

Globally, mobile devices also had a significant presence. In the EMEA region, mobile represents 56 percent of all video plays, a 15 percent quarter-over-quarter increase; mobile represented 54 percent of all video plays in North America; the Asia-Pacific region saw 64.4 percent of video plays occur on mobile devices, the highest in the world; and in Latin America, video plays topped 57 percent on smartphones and tablets.

For more information, read the full report here.