2ergo has launched its sMartsite platform, which it says offers media owners a simple way to make their content available on the mobile web, without incurring large development costs. sMartsite populates a mobile site by taking content from RSS and XML feeds, enabling a mobile site to be created within two weeks. sMartsite also integrates with the UK’s top five mobile advertising networks, opening up a potential revenue stream.
2ergo’s launch of sMartsite follows recent research released by the company that revealed that only 11 per cent of 700 UK print media titles studied have a mobile website which can be accessed across all devices and operating systems. With 11m smartphone users in the UK, 2ergo says that few publishers are fully exploiting the additional revenue opportunities available from mobile sites.
“Even in the media industry, which is pretty switched on to the mobile channel, the vast majority of publishers are not using mobile websites to deliver content and eyeballs to advertisers,” says 2ergo group managing director, John Stevens. “Some publishers use apps, but even Apple only has around 19 per cent of the global smartphone market, so by just developing an application, media organisations are limiting their mobile reach. 
“All smartphone users can access mobile websites, which are easily found via search engines and don’t need to be downloaded via an app store. Google has predicted that in the next 18 months, 15-30 per cent of searches will take place on mobile devices. So the ability to serve content via the mobile web is an essential part of online publishing.”
Stevens adds that sMartSite has been designed for publishers that don’t have the in-house resource or budget to be able to deliver a mobile strategy themselves and want a quick simple cost-effective solution to start capturing the attention of all smartphone users. There are three different tiered sMartsite options available, each with varying levels of functionality. Packages include ad integrations, analytics, video and image galleries, and data capture components.
