Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. And once the budget is there for the new shiny; it must be spent, to do otherwise would be wasteful!
Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to make things more complex so that actors on the inside can justify their existence.
I think it's more that existing employees want to amp up their resumes, and/or Mortgage-Driven Development. That the apps (and their CTAs) routinely suck tells me it's Mr. Learned-Rails-In-24hrs doing tech-lead.
"Well the consultants recommend this way."
Of course it changed eventually, but man it's weird to see. Of course, the we often joked that a consultant's job was to say do B while we were doing A, then come back in six months and ask why we were doing B? A was obviously the way to go!
The problem is with higher-ups that are on the backside of trends but also think it needs to be a priority to do it soon... Okay.