A number of independent market research agencies have confirmed news analysts had expected: Mobile is now the top attention medium in the United States, surpassing all other broadcast platforms including television.
The “flurry” of news about mobile’s American takeover began with Flurry’s report that Americans spent more time on mobile devices than they did watching television, a shift heralded by similar changes in the rest of the world in preceding months and years.
Nielsen followed with a series of studies painting their own picture of Americans’ embrace of mobile as a broadcast medium, the most recent of which stating that online streaming video viewing increased by 60 percent as traditional television viewership reported a four percent decline.
Finally, comScore told Internet Retailer that American consumers spent 52 percent of their time online on smartphone and tablet apps just this past week, a figure besting desktop web’s second-place forty percent. Facebook leads a crowded field of mobile apps vying for consumers’ attention, accounting for 1/6th of all app time.
What does this mean for marketers? Traditional broadcast mediums are well on their way out the door, a somewhat long-held sentiment now backed up by a bevy of facts and figures from reputable research firms. Marketers who fail to adopt mobile-first strategies for their brands do so at their own peril, risking being left in the wilderness as fans of broadcast television and desktop browsing continue their mass mobile exodus.
