The New Mobile Internet Mainstream

Fiorella Alvarado - July 26, 2010

Killing some time while waiting for a doctor’s appointment — we are completely engaged, open to new information and want to access it quickly.

If this is sounds like the perfect audience to target with your advertising, you are right — and recent reports show substantial growth in this segment. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Mobile Access 2010 report, 6 in 10 adults in the United States go online using a wireless connection.

Your company or client has an incredible opportunity to engage the consumer through PPC and get them to take immediate action. With a simple click of a button (or touch on the screen), they are either on your website or connecting a call to the phone number in your ad.

The results in this report were based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between April 29 and May 30, 2010, among a sample of 2,252 adults, age 18 and older. A few quick highlights of the report show potentially how large the mobile audience can be:

• 82% of Pew survey respondents said they owned a mobile phone. That translates into roughly 187 million, out of 228 million US adults overall.
• 38% — 40% of that population goes online from their handsets, or about 75 million people  (for 18-29 yr olds that number is 65%).
• 55% of mobile Internet users are online via their mobile phones at least once a day and 43% are access the mobile Internet “several times a day.”

The study also found that a lower income level did not have much affect on Americans having mobile access by noting that “17% of those earning less than $30,000 per year are cell-only wireless users, as are 20% of those who have not graduated from high school and 15% of those who have graduated high school but have not attended college,” whereas “the affluent and well-educated have higher overall levels of wireless internet use due to their much higher rates of ownership and use of laptop computers.”

By observing patterns in an analytics program, one can gauge what type of SEM strategy should be implemented in order to understand how to best to reach their audience.  Search ads with a phone number on the ad may be enough, but mobile sites and applications such as Chipotle Mobile Ordering that let the user find the nearest location, build and order their burrito – probably have their good share of loyal repeat customers.