While most of the growth in digital media consumption over the past four years has occurred on smartphones (up 394 percent) and tablets (up 1,721 percent), these mobile platforms are not eating into aggregate time spent on desktop, which has still grown 37 percent over this time period. The digital media pie continues to get bigger and Americans engage with screens during more occasions throughout the day than ever before.
- Across every age demographic, there is a substantially higher percentage of multi- platform and mobile-only internet users than the previous year. More than 3/4ths of all digital consumers (age 18+) are now using both desktop and mobile platforms to access the internet, up from 68 percent a year ago.
- The 55-years-and- older consumer segment is actually the fastest growing faction of mobile users, increasing its combined multi-platform and mobile-only share of audience from 60 percent to 74 percent in the past year.
Implications
While there is considerable “hype” around mobile, and your website should be optimized for mobile, you need to really understand where your audience is accessing your website and, more importantly, why.
Use your web analytics to determine what platform your audience is using to access your website and then ask why this is happening. Don’t let the hype around mobile allocate digital dollars where they might not do any good.
