According to Digiday, “Publishers' on-again, off-again relationship with apps is back on.” In the past several weeks alone we’ve seen launches from Quartz, the London Times and Refinery29. If we look further back to Q4 2016, we can include the WSJ city app in this list as well (worth noting also that the WSJ has plans for two more launches in 2016).

Despite these new apps coming to market, the expanding ecosystem with which to get content to users (social media, chat apps, push notification apps like Facebook’s Notify, etc) brings up the question: do apps still matter? If so, for how long?

The greatest challenge is just getting people to download an app, even if the promise of a good experience is great. The Strategy of this latest latest bunch seems to be targeting audience segments or experiences, an idea that often works on social (Digiday). Could this be the solution?