Yellow Pages and comScore have released a study revealing double digit growth in local mobile usage – a development that is “unlocking access to younger, wealthier, on-the-go consumers.”
Confirming our suspicions (and the findings of similar studies in recent memory), individuals in search of local businesses are now, more than ever, turning to the mobile web while similar local searches performed on personal computers grew at a slower pace.
According to the data presented, mobile subscribers accessing business directories on a mobile phone rose 14 percent year-over-year to 17.3 million users in March 2010. “This increase outpaced 10 percent growth,” the report noted, “in the number of mobile media users who browsed the mobile web, used applications or downloaded content during the same time period.”
For mobile marketers, the data indicates just how increasingly valuable mobile users are as consumers. The report found that 58 percent of those searching business directories via the mobile web are 34 or younger. Better than half have a household income in excess of $75,000. And, perhaps most excitingly, the number of people accessing business directories on a mobile device at least once per week increased more than 16 percent year-over-year to nearly five million in March 2010.
Additionally, the study revealed that mobile users access content that is attractive for many advertisers.
Mobile users, for example, who access business directories are “three and half times more likely as the average mobile media user to access women’s magazine content, health information, real estate listings, and job listings via their mobile devices.”