Why do web portals want me to use “their app”

[travisgriggs]

I write mobile apps for our company using Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. I do so because that's what I figured out how to do, and we do quite a bit with BLE and 2+ years ago, the BLE shims for Cordova/PhoneGap weren't very robust.

Everyday, I see more and more push to write progressive apps, or somehow write my apps using web stack technologies. I'm fine with that. I perceive that more and more, the consensus is that you need to have a pretty good reason to write a native app instead of a mobile web app of sorts. I'm fine with that and am not opposed to succumbing.

The one thing I don't understand though is why many large portal sites want me to download and use their native app, when I go to their mobile web site. CNN for example. BBC. LinkedIn. Facebook. On and on. All of these sites and many other "large public facing" companies always have a banner up top suggesting I download their mobile app. If progressive is the way to go, why do these companies persist in wanting to offer me a native app? Have they just not "caught up with the times" yet? Are they able to better monetize me when I use their native app? What is their incentive?

[mrtejas99]

Many people use adblocking software while visiting web portals. But when we use mobile apps it is becomes difficult for naive users to block ads and hence the app owners can get more money.

[magma17]

Funny fact: Netflix sends me to the web in order to do account changes (real stuff). Why can't I do that on their app? Even desktop app.