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Mobile-only audience grows among women, younger users: report

There is a growing mobile-only audience, with the highest concentration among women 25-49 years old and adults 18-23, according to a new report from Jumptap.

Key findings from the report, "Screen Jumping: Understanding Today's Cross-Screen Consumer," include that more than half of all time spent on the Internet is now through a mobile device, 12 percent on tablets and 39 percent on smartphones. Additionally, 14 percent of women aged 25-49 access the Internet only through a mobile device.

?Gone are the days of blanketing the general consumer with one message on one device,? said Frank Weishaupt, chief operating officer of Jumptap, Boston.

?Instead, advertisers need to understand their audience and drive the right messaging on the right screen,? he said. ?This study illustrates the critical differences between demographics and how they approach a multi-screen world.

?The most surprising finding was the quickly growing mobile-only audience. Women 25-49 and adults 18-24 lead the pack in time spent on mobile, with 14 percent women 24-49 accessing the Internet solely through a mobile device.

Screen jumping
With tablet shipments expected to surpass portable PC shipments by the end of this year, Jumptap expects the mobile-only audience to continue to grow.

The report reflects how cross-screen use varies by age and gender.

Other findings include that women 25-49, as well as 18-24 year olds, spend the largest share of their Internet time on mobile devices, 61 percent for women 25-49 across both tablet and mobile, and 59 percent for 18-24 year olds.

For men and women between the ages of 18 and 24, 22 percent are PC users only, 65 percent move between PC and mobile and 13 percent use mobile only.

For men between the ages of 25 and 49, 20 percent are PC only, 74 percent use both PCs and mobile and 6 percent use mobile only.

For women between the ages of 25 and 49, 17 percent use PCs only, 69 percent jump between PCs and mobile while 14 percent use mobile only.

For people over the age of 50 years, 48 percent use PC only, 54 percent move between PCs and mobile and only 1 percent use mobile exclusively.

Mobile content
The findings also show that cross-screen behavior varies by content. Mobile is a favorite for 77 percent of users when it comes to streaming music while 55 percent prefer to view weather on mobile and 48 percent to play games on mobile.

PCs are a favorite for 69 percent who like to consume business/finance content on a PC, 62 percent who prefer PCs for sports related content and 56 percent who gravitate towards PCs for food content.

Other key findings include that smartphones and tablets have doubled the amount of time consumers spend online. In 2010, consumers spent 451 billion minutes online, with only 63 billion of those minutes allocated to smartphone online use. By February of this year, consumers spent a total of 890 billion minutes online, with 308 billion minutes spent on smartphones, 467 billion minutes spent on PCs and 115 billion minutes spent on tablets.

?It?s clear from this study that if you are not advertising in mobile you are severely missing the mark; and quite frankly, may be missing entire segments of your consumer base,? Mr. Weishaupt said.

?Advertisers also need to understand that ?mobile? includes both smartphone and tablet, and different demos tend to use the devices differently,? he said. ?We believe that audience understanding ? and leveraging data to enhance and execute on that understanding ? drives the most relevant campaigns.

?If women 18-49 is a core demographic for your brand, then you should absolutely be crafting a campaign geared toward their interests, product affinities and device behaviors.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York