Mobile Phones and Tablets Drive 6.8% of U.S. Digital Traffic in August
According to a wealth of new data from comScore, non-computer traffic for the U.S. was nearly 7 percent in August, with the majority coming from mobile phones. The report also found that nearly half of tablet owners made or completed a purchase on their tablets.
The report, “Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits,” shows 6.8 percent of U.S. digital traffic was from non-computer devices in August. More specifically, 64.4 percent of this was from mobile devices, 28.1 percent from tablets and 7.5 percent from other devices.
Back in May, non-computer traffic accounted for 6.2 percent of all digital traffic. The breakdowns were 68.2 percent from mobile devices, 22.5 percent from tablets and 9.3 percent from other devices. This reflects the rapid growth of traffic from tablets.
Of all traffic from mobile devices, 62.8 percent was from mobile access, while 37.2 percent was from Wi-Fi access. For tablets, the split was 9.2 percent from mobile access and 90.8 percent from Wi-Fi access; for other devices, the split was 1.9 percent from mobile access and 98.1 percent from Wi-Fi access.
The report also looked at how U.S. consumers viewed news content on different devices throughout the course of a day. It found that for mobile devices, page traffic for the news category on weekdays peaked around 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. For tablets, traffic peaked at around 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. For computers, traffic to this category peaked around 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For all three device types, weekend traffic to the news category generally peaked around 9 a.m. before tapering off a bit for the afternoon and evening. There’s a small bump around 9 p.m. to midnight.
In terms of mobile usage, comScore found that the three-month averages ending in August were 49.6 percent for mobile media, 25.5 percent for voice and text, and 24.9 percent for just voice.
According to the report, there were 84.5 million Americans age 13 and older who owned a smartphone in August, or 36.1 percent of the mobile population. This audience grew 52 percent in the past year.
comScore also noted that in September, 48 percent of tablet owners have made/completed a purchase on their tablets in the past month. The report found that 56 percent of tablet owners looked up product/price info for a specific store on their tablets, 54 percent read customer ratings, 51 percent compared product and price information, and 51 percent searched for a nearby store.
Forty-nine percent of tablet owners have searched for coupons at least once in the past month, 48 percent have downloaded a coupon/savings offer, and 46 percent have found or redeemed a coupon/coupon code.
“As mobile and connected devices make digital omnivores of consumers who might once have accessed online content exclusively on computers, it becomes all the more important for publishers and advertisers alike to understand how these devices shift the dynamics of online visitation and engagement across the industry,” the report concludes.
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