Forbes.com has 18 million smartphone visitors

Forbes chief product officer Lewis Dvorkin reports that Forbes.com now has 18 million smartphone-only visitors, bigger than its total audience five years ago.

Dvorkin writes, “As the charts show, Forbes.com reaches 11% of millennials across the Web. They’re 30% of our total audience. My focus goes deeper: 50% of our total audience is mobile (40% smartphones, 10% tablet); we have 18 million smartphone-only visitors, bigger than our total audience five years ago; 85% of our U.S. referrals from Facebook and Twitter are via the phone. Add it all up: two-thirds of our smartphone-only visitors are millennials.

“That’s a mouthful of numbers that say one thing: the digital article page as we know it with the classic 600-800 word story is in a race against time. The millennial-mobile-social combo is certain to kill it off as the main driver in the hunt for daily audience. Marketers and agencies know it, which is why they pay so little for desktop-like banners inside posts on phones. Easy scrolling on hand-held devices won’t stop the inevitable either. Visitors to Forbes.com are no more likely to scroll down a sea of gray paragraphs on phones than they are on laptops or desktops.”

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