Even if you never looked at a single survey or piece of data you’d know that time spent with smartphones and tablets is growing dramatically, just from anecdotal experience.
However, there are multiple studies that have reported mobile devices drive more than 50 percent of internet time.
Digital metrics firm comScore now says that mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) “accounted for 60 percent of total digital media time spent” in May. More remarkably apps represent 51 percent of all digital media time. (Per comScore, apps constitute roughly 83 percent of mobile time spent; Nielsen says it’s closer to 90 percent.)
Perhaps even more striking than the general stats are vertical or content category data on mobile vs. PC time spent. For example, more than 70 percent of social networking time is spent on mobile devices and 90 percent of time with maps is spent on mobile.
These data don’t mean the “PC is dead.” But mobile is clearly the driver of user behavior across a wide range of categories.
Mobile advertising, though growing, is not keeping pace with consumer time shifting. Last year there were roughly $7 billion spent on mobile ads in the US. This year that could double to $14 billion (or more). Even if so, it would still fall short.
If ad spend and time spent were commensurate, ad revenue distribution in the US would look like this:
Total 2014 digital ad revenue projection for US: ~$49 billion
Mobile ad spend: $29 billion
PC ad spend: $20 billion
Most of that mobile spend would be directed to apps based on the fact that they’re the place that mobile consumers are most engaged. However, I suspect it will be at least 3 or 4 years (at least) before we see any sort of alignment between mobile time spent and digital ad spend.
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