Digital Moms Report. On average, they have two children. Income matters – but only insofar as it impacts what Digital Moms can do, not what they want to do. 3 out of 5 Digital Mom segments see themselves as influencers – but they vary significantly on who they influence and how. 60% of all Digital Moms play online games. All Digital Moms would rather send or receive a text than have to talk on the phone.
Facebook to See Three in 10 Mobile Display Dollars This Year. Following explosive entrances by Facebook and Twitter to the marketplace, as well as a strong performance from Google, US mobile advertising spending grew 178% last year to $4.11 billion, according to a new forecast by eMarketer, and spending is expected to rise a further 77.3% to $7.29 billion in 2013. That’s a nearly fivefold increase in spending since just 2011, and includes ad dollars spent on display, search and messaging-based formats served to all mobile devices, including tablets.
By 2017, eMarketer projects US advertisers will devote $27.13 billion to mobile—just under 45% of all digital ad spending and 13.8% of total media ad spending that year. While top-line figures were relatively unchanged since the previous forecast, there were some small adjustments in market share and revenues for some of the larger players following Q4 results. Corporate subscribers have access to all eMarketer analyst reports, articles, data and more. In-Store Gets the Cold Shoulder, as More Women Favor Web Buying. The benefits of shopping via digital channels—convenience, low prices and the ability to browse vast inventories—has brought a fast-growing number of people into the ecommerce marketplace. And women, often the chief shoppers of the household, are at the forefront of this transition. Women's network SheSpeaks and female-oriented marketing firm Lippe Taylor surveyed over 2,000 US female internet users in March 2013 and found that only 6% reported still researching products primarily in-store, while another 5% asked friends and family for recommendations most often.
The rest—89% in total—did their browsing mostly on the web, either via desktop (71%) or on mobile devices (18%). There is no question that for retailers trying to reach women early in the purchase path, online is the place to be. Women’s digital shopping activity moved seamlessly into purchasing as well. But mobile also played a role in the deep research phase. The home still trumped work as the place to research products. US Social Spend Breakouts Show Rising Influence of Mobile, Local Outreach. Three major trends are driving some of the biggest changes in social ad spend and helping kick up growth: the mobile channel, local outreach and native ad formats. Estimates from BIA/Kelsey released in its “Annual US Local Media Forecast: Social Local Media 2012-2017” report showed that the firm expected social media ad spending in the US to total $6.1 billion this year—and be just shy of $11 billion in 2017. But how that total is distributed is beginning to change as more marketers take up some of these new social advertising opportunities.
BIA/Kelsey expected local social ad spending to grow by 45.5% in 2013 and reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4% between 2012 and 2017. This year, local spend is expected to account for about one-quarter of social ad spending. By 2017, national spending will still dominate social spending, but local’s portion will rise to one-third. Corporate subscribers have access to all eMarketer analyst reports, articles, data and more. How Do Internet Users Divvy Up Their Desktop, Mobile Web Time? The bite mobile is taking out of desktop internet use keeps getting bigger. The Media Behavior Institute monitored US study participants and found that the mobile phone and tablet were drawing down the percentage of internet users who turn to the computer in a given week: The percentage on desktop slipped by 5 points between the six-month period ending in July 2012 and the six-month period ending in January 2013.
As desktop’s reach falls, mobile’s reach rises. On average, 43.5% of participants accessed the internet via a mobile phone each week during the period ending in January 2013, an 8-percentage-point increase over the period ending in July 2012. Tablets grew their average weekly reach by 4 percentage points, used by 17% of participants at the end of the study period. On the desktop internet, activity was much more heavily weighted toward social networking, which accounted for 27% of time spent online. Previous Article. Why Are Moms So Social? US moms continue to increase their social media usage. According to a March 2013 study by comScore for online parenting resource BabyCenter, more than 90% of US mom internet users reported using social media on a regular basis. BabyCenter estimated that 20% more moms used social media in 2013 than did so in 2010. At this point, moms who do not use social media are becoming practically unheard of.
Moms between 18- to 34-years-old were not only more likely to be on social sites, they also spent considerably more time on Facebook than the general population—24% more time on desktop, and factoring in mobile, young moms spent 260% more time than the average user. BabyCenter also found that moms overindex in their use of all the other leading social platforms—YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. The biggest difference between moms and the general population is on YouTube. Corporate subscribers have access to all eMarketer analyst reports, articles, data and more.
Moms Still Make Social a Priority. Women with children living at home are prime targets for marketers, making many household purchase decisions and also spending significant amounts of time with media—especially digital. eMarketer estimates that mothers are significantly more likely to be internet users than the average American, at 94.5% vs. 75.7% of the overall population at the end of 2012. That’s nearly 34 million moms using the web on at least a monthly basis, a number that will inch up in coming years. More than eight in 10 of these women use social networking sites at least once per month, with three-quarters using Facebook specifically.
That makes moms more avid social networkers than Gen Xers, though slightly less likely than millennials to use the services. Twitter is significantly less popular, with just 17% of online moms using the service at least monthly. By this metric, again, moms are ahead of Gen Xers but slightly behind millennial usage levels. Check out today’s other articles: Mobile Becoming Moms' Daily Shopping Companion. There is no question that mobile is becoming an essential shopping tool for many US moms. According to a March 2013 survey from retail solutions company Alliance Data, more than half of surveyed mom internet users reported using their smartphone or tablet at least weekly for some aspect of shopping, whether it be research or buying. And 35% of respondents said they used their device daily for shopping purposes. Mobile’s usefulness for shopping is easy to see. Convenience and a better ability to price compare were the top reasons moms’ reported using their device as they moved through the purchase funnel.
Clothing and beauty ranked as the top product categories for which moms shopped on their smartphones and tablets, at 56% and 47%, respectively. Showrooming—the practice of going into stores to compare products and prices, often using mobile to shop around—is common among moms, as well. However, mobile is not the primary method US moms prefer for shopping. Previous Article. Majority of US Mobile Consumers Use Devices to Comparison Shop. Mobile commerce is grabbing an ever-growing slice of the overall ecommerce pie. eMarketer estimates that 15% of all US online retail sales in 2013 will be made on a mobile device, an increase from 11% in 2012.
Those projections correspond with an April survey of US mobile internet users conducted by AYTM Market Research that demonstrates just how common mcommerce has become for mobile internet users. According to the poll, 55% of respondents had ever made a purchase on their mobile device, although only 9% did so with great frequency. Researching products and prices on mobile was an even more popular shopping activity. In fact, 72% of respondents said they had used their phone to research product prices or seek a better deal online, with 22% saying they did so often. Apps, in particular, appear to be playing an important role in leading shoppers down the path to purchase. Previous Article. Smartphones in the Hands of the Youngest Demographic. May 23, 2013 |Demographics|Mobile Kids are learning earlier than ever to swipe and scroll on smartphones. Harris Interactive surveyed online US students in February 2013 on behalf of Pearson and found that 19% of elementary school students used smartphones and 42% of middle school students did so as well.
Elementary school consisted of grades 4 and 5, while middle school represented grades 6 through 8. The home is where many kids encounter their first smartphone. A Grunwald Associates and Learning First Alliance study in November 2012 found that in 77% of surveyed US households with school-age children, someone in the family owned a smartphone, nearly equal to the penetration rate of PCs in such households. And kids are highly likely to pick up those phones and begin navigating their capabilities. The study found that 43% of children ages 3 to 18 used the smartphone, with 65% of that group doing so on a daily basis. Previous Article.
Half of US Mobile Users to Play Games in 2013. More than half of all US mobile phone users—about 125.9 million people or 39.8% of the total US population—will play games on their phones this year, as the ongoing explosion in usage pushes mobile gaming revenues to $1.78 billion in the US, according to new figures from eMarketer. Mobile gaming has been a high-growth market in recent years, with revenues increasing at triple-digit rates in 2012 and 2011. But even as the market grows more mature, double-digit growth rates are anticipated in coming years, with revenues expected to reach $3.77 billion by 2017. This year, the largest share of revenues will come from downloads of games themselves, with in-game purchases accounting for just slightly less. Ad revenues will be relatively low, at $297 million this year. Of all three types of mobile game revenues, ad revenues grew the fastest last year and will do the same again in 2013. The rise in smartphone ownership has boosted and will continue to drive mobile gaming’s rapid growth.
For Mobile Gaming, the iPhone Rules. For a majority of consumers, games are a crucial part of the smartphone experience, and the iPhone is smartphone gamer’s platform of choice, according to a December study from Arbitron Mobile. Analyzing the behavior of 12,000 US Android, iPhone and BlackBerry users who had installed the Arbitron Mobile software, the company found iPhone users were 10 percentage points more likely than Android users to be gamers. While large majorities of both groups played games on their device, the study found that 85.7% of iPhone users did so vs. 76% of Android users. The iPhone not only attracts a broader base of gamers, gamers on the platform are more devoted as well. iPhone users who played games averaged 743.1 minutes per month—more than 12 hours of gaming time, spread out over an average of 151.5 monthly gaming sessions.
Android gamers spent an average of 484 minutes per month playing, and averaged 94.6 monthly sessions.