New Study Reveals Trends in Mobile Content Consumption

Jumptap, a unified audience platform, has released a joint study with comScore that shows some of the latest trends in the way people consume content on mobile devices.

“Our Screen Jumping study reveals patterns about how different demographic groups approach device usage,” JumpTap CEO Frank Weishaupt said. “As advertisers approach the digital consumer, it’s more important than ever to take into consideration device fragmentation patterns. Our investment in this research is to better equip the advertiser to understand not only ‘who’ to target, but ‘where’ and ‘why’.”

The data was culled from comScore’s analytic tools Media Metrix, Media Metrix Multi-Platform, and Mobile Metrix, analyzing the behavior of several key demographics: 18-24 year-olds, men aged 25-49, women aged 25-49 and people over 50.

The study found that two out of three adults online are “cross-screen” users, accessing the Internet on both mobile devices and PCs. Over half of all Internet traffic now comes from mobile devices, with 12 percent of that on tablets and the remaining 39 percent on smartphones.

The study also found that women aged 25-49 accessed content the most on their smartphones, with 14 percent of them accessing the Internet exclusively on mobile devices. Women aged 25-49 and 18-24 spent most time on the Internet on a mobile device. Advertisers will have to roll out mobile advertising campaigns if they want to reach these demographics.

People also use different devices for consuming different kinds of content. For example, 77 percent of streaming music was done on smartphones. The two other most popular kinds of content on smartphones were weather at 55 percent and games at 48 percent. On the other hand, most people accessed business and finance content on PCs 68 percent of the time.

People also changed their habits throughout the day. Most visits to weather content from tablets came in the early morning and prime time. Viewing of weather content remained constant on PCs throughout the workday, before dropping off sharply in the early evening. Visits to gaming content increased steadily throughout the day, before dropping during prime time.

The results of the study have profound implications for advertisers.

“Advertisers recognize that we now live in a multi-platform world, and understanding how different consumer segments engage with content across platforms throughout the day can help them optimize the effectiveness of their campaigns,” said Antoinette Marty, Senior Director, Marketing Solutions at comScore. “With usage shifting so quickly to mobile, the need to understand multi-platform audience dynamics will only accelerate.”