The number of consumers accessing content from retailers via their mobile devices in the past year increased a dramatic 74 percent for a total 13 million, according to a new report from ad network Millennial Media.

Millennial Media?s Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting report focuses retail and points to how important retailers consider mobile as a tool for engagement. Mobile commerce is quickly growing in importance, the report also found.

?Approximately 60 percent of retail advertisers? mobile campaign objectives were high-funnel-related, with 41 percent focusing on sustained in-market presence and 21 percent on brand awareness,? said Mack McKelvey, senior vice president of marketing at Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD. ?Post-click, two of the top three campaign actions, 'Place call' and 'Download application,' leveraged by retail advertisers were mobile-only.

?We saw a strong diversity in the types of retail advertisers utilizing mobile advertising," she said. "In fact, there were eight different subcategories active last month, including department stores, computers and electronics retailers, home and garden brands and more.? 

The numbers are based on the top 250 campaigns on Millennial Media?s network in April. 

Millennial Media claims its ad network reaches more than 92 million mobile users nationwide and 142 million mobile worldwide.

Growing habit
The report shows that consumers are also accessing retail content on a regular basis. 

Of the 13 million, more than 6.5 million accessed retail content one to three times per month, while 42 million accessed this information at least once a week. And 22 million look at mobile retail content almost every day.

Retailers are investing in mobile to engage customers and drive continue use of their mobile shopping sites and applications. 

In addition to in-market presence and brand awareness, retailers other goals include increased foot traffic (17 percent), site traffic (14 percent), product launch/release (4 percent) and lead generation/registrations (3 percent).

In comparison, lead generation/registrations was the top goal for advertiser campaigns overall, with 30 percent of campaigns having this as a goal. 

Lead generation, in-market presence and product launch together represented 76 percent of advertisers? campaign goals. 

Retailers are also promoting mobile commerce on their mobile sites and applications to encourage consumers to take advantage of timely promotions.

Mobile commerce is growing quickly, with 20 percent of campaigns having this as a post-click action. This number doubled month-over-month.

Campaigns that let consumers take some sort of social media action grew as well, representing 28 percent of the retail post-click campaign action mix. This number grew 115 percent month-over-month.

?Seventeen percent of campaigns on our network allowed consumers to utilize social media as a post-click campaign action,? Ms. McKelvey said. ??Mocial,? or mobile social, is a category that continues to grow on our network, and was up another 39 percent month-over-month in April.?

Targeting a bull's-eye
For retail advertiser campaigns overall, campaigns giving consumers the option to download an application represented 32 percent of the post-click action mix, place call was next with 40 percent, followed by mobile social media at 17 percent and mobile commerce at 12 percent. 

Department stores lead in the makeup of retailers running campaigns in April with a 22 percent share. Computer and electronics stores had a 17 percent share as did home and garden retailers.

Targeted-audience campaigns grew 23 percent month-over-month and represented 48 percent of the campaign mix. Mobile campaigns with a broad reach represented 52 percent.

Local market targeting grew 22 percent month-over-month and represented 56 percent of the targeted mix. Demographic targeting accounted for 34 percent of the mix and behavioral targeting 10 percent.

?There was a nearly 50/50 split between advertisers using targeted audience campaigns or broad reach methods,? Ms. McKelvey said.

?The largest increase in the audience-focused campaigns were in local-market-targeted campaigns which experienced 22 percent growth month-over-month and represented 56 percent of the targeted audience mix in April."

Final Take
Chantal Tode, Mobile Marketer