mobile social media access grows in triple-digits year over year

A recently released study by comScore showed that more than 30 Percent of Smartphone Owners Access Social Networking Sites via a Mobile Browser. That's a lot of people. But, the even bigger statistic is that access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has grown at an almost unbelievable rate: Facebook access via mobile browsers grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter saw a 347% increase. Very interesting is that comScore does not include mobile apps in their statistics. Adding in all the Twitter and Facebook apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry surely push the percentage even higher. 

I think Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile says it best: "Social networking remains one of the... fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web... "

 

Number of Mobile Subscribers Accessing Social Sites via Mobile Browser(3-month average ending Jan. 2010 vs. Jan. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+)
	Total Audience (000)
Social Network Site	Jan-09	Jan-10	% Change
Facebook.com	11,874	25,137	112
MySpace.com	12,338	11,439	-7
Twitter.com	1,051	4,700	347
Source: comScore MobiLens, March 2010

Posted via web from Connected Marketer

26% read news on mobile devices - Pew Research

A new report from the Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals that more than 1 in 4 Americans read news on mobile devices including Smartphones.

The report, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," studies the impact of digital media on news consumption and interaction behaviors. The part of the study that focused specifically on the growth of mobile devices reveals that more than 80% of adults now own cell phones and 37% use their phones to access the Web.

According to Tom Rosenstiel, Director of PEJ, "Those numbers are only going to go up as the penetration of smart phones grows. The computer of the future is held in your hand."

These figures mirror a recent report from the Federal Communications Commission, which studied both wired and wireless broadband connectivity in the United States. The FCC is currently pushing to expand the wireless spectrum available to mobile broadband providers in anticipation of strong growth in consumer demand for these services.

The PEJ report highlights the importance of that trend to media organizations. "What the data shows is people are increasingly looking for news at their convenience, and nothing is more convenient than the device in your pocket," Rosenstiel said in an interview Friday.

Another finding of the PEJ report: 46 percent of "on-the-go" news consumers are also "news participators," meaning they actively contribute to the creation or distribution of information by commenting on articles, tagging content, contributing images, videos and articles, or sharing a link with their social network.

PEJ further identifies a highly engaged sub-group of mobile news consumers, about 13 percent of U.S. adult Internet users, who are characterized by daily news readership across multiple platforms including mobile, online, print and television.

The study reveals that while those highly engaged consumers are reading a lot of news, they do so from multiple outlets on multiple platforms. Just 7 percent of Americans get their news from a single source, while 46 percent visit four to six sources, in print, Web, TV and mobile on a typical daily basis.

Rostenstiel said the notion of foraging for news can be a positive one for news organizations. "People graze but they don't graze very far."

He noted the average engaged news reader has a half-dozen sources they return to frequently. "So, while people are hunting for what they are interested in, they are not hunting everywhere. They are hunting among a landscape of sources they know and are familiar with."

Posted via web from Connected Marketer

Social Networking Chronological Graph with Number of Members

via gizmodo.com

Posted via web from Eric's online marketing blog

Ads integrated into content are the most effective for branding

This is for all the research and number geeks like me out there.

According to a new study conducted byDynamic Logic and published by media post, "ads integrated into the content of the page are the most effective in driving online ad awareness and purchase intent". So, according to this new study, banners and skyscrapers are actually LESS effective in advertising terms than rectangular ads that sit in the copy!

Ken Mallon, Dynamic Logic's SVP of Custom Solutions, puts it best when he says: "...creative quality is the most important factor driving the success of online advertising... (but) bigger doesn't always mean better..."

In addition, the research revealed that advertising campaigns utilizing Rich Media with Video created the strongest brand impact (across most branding goals, including aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intent) compared to campaigns using Simple Flash and Rich Media without Video formats. Very insightful, is that the worst performer was Simple Flash, the format used most often by agencies and advertisers.

And in conclusion here hare some great takeaways from the study:

• Try delivering a Rich Media with Video ad as the first ad exposure to addressable online audience.
• On a tight budget, select less expensive formats and consider frequency capping to extend reach.
• Factor media fees and rich media fees in together and optimize most effective formats
• For message association goals, consider adding the message to every frame of the ad for best results.
• For every branding goal studied, a different rich media format was better than Simple Flash at getting results.

Source: Media Post Research Brief (September 1, 2009)