With mobile marketing being such a hot commodity these days, I find that it is quite important to know just how much growth or even how much shrinking is happening with mobile consumers. Most mobile marketing platforms that are being managed today rely entirely on the amount of traffic mobile internet is showing. Now, desktop internet still sees the most traffic, as it will for a long time. However, mobile internet is rapidly growing in terms of traffic, and this fact is what has kept marketers interested in mobile for as long as they have been. As of last Thursday, mobile has shown that it will not be slowing down any time soon.
Apparently, mobile traffic has, so far, increased 27% this year. Janet Aronica, a writer for the all-around internet news and marketing site Shareaholic, reported some of the company’s findings in one of her articles.
Our data, based on 200,000 publishers who reach 300 million people each month shows that mobile traffic has increased 27% this year so far.Â
Mobile internet traffic has been showing growth for a long while now, according to the findings. In February of this year, mobile had already reached the point where it accounted for just over 12% of all internet traffic. Now, in the findings from September, mobile traffic has grown to just over 16% of all internet traffic.
That is not really what is important here though is it? Mobile traffic will continue to grow, and that is all well and good. However, it is not really how much traffic mobile sees that determines the success of a mobile campaign. Sure, it helps, but it is getting people to respond to your marketing efforts in a way that will create a successful campaign that is most important. Janet writes a bit about this in her article, showing that mobile may not be doing as well as its traffic numbers make it seem.
Mobile visitors have a 9.56% higher bounce rate than desktop visitors, and desktop visitors average 2.358 pages per visit, whereas mobile visitors average 1.979 pages per visit. With more smartphones and tablets, more mobile traffic is a given. Keeping that traffic on site long enough to take a meaningful action (share content, subscribe to content, or make a purchase from a product page) is the real key.
So, regardless of traffic levels on mobile continuing to rise, it seems that engagement has stayed significantly stronger on desktop internet platforms. A 10% higher bounce rate shows that mobile users are not quite as interested in spending time on the internet on their devices as they are on their desktop computers. Mobile marketing will continue to work best when marketers stay away from the mobile browsing advertisements and stick to advertisings on mobile content, such as games, music, and other apps. However, smartphones will continue to improve, and with them the mobile browsing experience will become more and more user friendly. When this happens, mobile internet will show better engagement results, but until then mobile internet will most likely stay firmly behind desktop internet.
