Flipboard has come a long way since making a splash as the company behind one of the world’s first iPad apps in 2010, giving owners of Apple’s then new tablet computer a refreshing way to filter and read online content.

Three years later, the service has around 75 million users worldwide, using a variety of devices and operating systems to access stories produced by hundreds of professional publishers from San Francisco to Seoul.

It’s been slow but steady progress, emphasizes Eric Alexander, one of the company’s founding members who now spearheads international development.

After all, Alexander points out, it took the Flipboard team nearly 18 months after their iPad debut in July 2010 to a launch their second app, for the iPhone, in December 2011.

“We were worried about how to present beautiful content on the tiny little screen, and how to do the same kind of ads, but we figured that problem out,” says Alexander, one of the speakers at this week’s APAC Mobile Marketing Forum in Singapore.

Crawl, walk, run

Flipboard’s modus operandi is crawl, walk, run, devising scalable solutions to specific technological and business challenges before taking on new ones.

That caution has reined in expansion and monetization in Asia, but advertisers and media owners in this part of the world should expect more activity soon.

Flipboard has already gained some traction here, enlisting premium publishers in large online markets such as China, Japan and Korea, while creating earlier-stage localized experiences for Hong Kong and Taiwan.

However, there are no local ads sold in these markets as yet. That, combined with broadening the footprint into other Asian markets, will be next.

“We plan to roll out advertising in Asia shortly,” Alexander says in an interview with Media Business Asia, though declining to provide details.

“2014 will be a big year for us,” he added.

This includes more content pacts with publishers as well as distribution deals with local carriers to sustain Flipboard’s momentum in current markets, while branching out into new ones.

Flipboard’s current arrangements with publishers tend to be based on sharing revenue from ads sold on the platform, with content owners thought to be taking 70%.

Traffic first, ads later

The digital distributor seeks to mimic a premium print environment, dispensing with clicking and scrolling in favor of touch-based flips of digital pages.

It also represents a bid to bring more brand advertising online, though improving the user experience takes precedence over monetization, Alexander stresses, at least in the early stages of market development.

Local editors, hired to complement Flipboard’s tech-based analysis of local content trends, are already in place in key hubs such as Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul.

“The initial stage of a partnership is simple,” Alexander says.

“Let me take content and build traffic.

“We may not serve ads for a year, but let’s build up the market and then turn it on,” he adds. “This is a long-term partnership.”

For select markets in Asia, that time is now.

In the long term, advertising may not be Flipboard’s only revenue stream. In the US for example, the company has started exploring business models around high-end digital catalogs.

Nonetheless, ramping up ad revenue remains the main focus today.

“We’re looking at what is the easiest, scalable model,” Alexander says.

“Our model has worked very well in the beginning, and publishers like it. We have to think of something like it, but we’ve got to be able to scale it.”