It’s no secret that the mobile market is growing, with sales of smartphones and tablets on the rise, it means that more and more people are interacting with apps, as well as the mobile web. Like it or not, this means that all organisations need to start shifting their traditional views of marketing toward digital. Just how big is this mobile market, though?
Mobile audience increasing
comScore regularly measure traffic to the 50 most popular “web properties”, including networks of websites like Google, Facebook and Amazon. In February 2013, analysis showed an overall increase in unique visitors using smartphones & tablets, in varying degrees.
Almost 40% of the web properties surveyed had seen their audience expand by at least 50% due to this boost in mobile access, showing that mobile is making a massive impact on the currently most popular websites.
Several properties even expanded by over 200%, and those that saw large increases were websites that support “in-the-moment” activities. The list includes Twitter, Groupon, Pandora and Pinterest; all services that can be consumed in short amounts of time – which is ideal for mobile browsing.
With so much going on at the top of the web’s traffic league table, the effect is sure to trickle down to the rest of the web, as smartphone and tablet sales continue to rise.
Other media platforms in decline
In the USA, there’s been a huge 50% decline in TV audience size since 2002. Advertising revenue has been gradually decreasing, whilst subscription fees have had to be increased to make up for their losses.
Newspapers too, have seen a 48% drop in their total advertising revenue since 2005, according to State of the Media. Print revenue in this segment has been in decline since then, with online ad revenue remaining reasonably stable at 14% of total ad revenue.
All this may be dire news for traditional media outlets, but it’s encouraging for companies that are embracing mobile into their strategies, since their coming out on top. Larger numbers of younger audiences are opting to access the media via mobile, so now is an excellent time to make the most of the changing audience behaviour.
For anyone unconvinced by all this hype about mobile, we should also remember that sales of tablets are likely to overtake sales of laptops & desktop computers in the near future. Mobile is on the up, so make sure your organisation is going to go with it.
