Forbes gets 70 percent of its revenue from digital

Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat writes about how Forbes Media gets 70 percent of its revenue from its digital operations.

Takahashi writes, “Now, about 70 percent of Forbes’ revenue comes from digital sources, and 10 percent of the digital revenue comes from mobile. While mobile is 50 percent of overall traffic, the mobile revenue is only about 10 percent.

“Mobile revenue is only about 20 percent of the monetizable inventory. Web-based ads on the desktop allow for deeper engagement, and Forbes can also put more ads per page on a desktop page. Still, the company isn’t panicking about this situation. It believes that it is making progress in closing the gap between mobile traffic and mobile revenue. Howard said the company is working with mobile monetization companies to try to accomplish this.

“Forbes has no pay wall, and most readers never log in or register. But they come back.

“Forbes recently acquired Camerama, an ‘acqui-hire,’ where the founders were doing something with an app that they hadn’t seen before. In October, they will release a new app, dubbed “Under 30.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.