Survey: 50 Percent Are Sharing Coupons, Mobile Ads Via Smartphones

Social marketing provider

RadiumOne this morning released the results of a survey of US consumers about their mobile habits. There’s not a great deal of new information in the survey but it reaffirms the growing importance of mobile in the consumer purchase cycle — a basic fact that many marketers still seem not to fully appreciate.

Half the survey sample were people between 18 and 34 years old. Dubbed “Generation C” (after “connected” rather than ascorbic acid) this group is highly engaged with mobile devices, with some percentage of them being “mobile first” consumers.

For example, according to a Q1 2012 survey of 1,500 US adults, Opus Research found that just over 30 percent of those under 34 preferred accessing the internet on mobile devices to a PC. An earlier Pew survey found that 25 percent preferred mobile devices for internet access.

Here are some of the top-line datapoints from the RadiumOne survey:

1. 47 percent of respondents said they’d clicked on a mobile ad in the past 3 months (presumably intentionally)

2. 54 percent had made a purchase on a mobile device at least once in the past 6 months (however there’s no further visibility on the nature of these purchases)

3. 55 percent use mobile devices to comparison shop at least once weekly

Respondents in this survey indicated they split their time roughly equally between apps and mobile web, with a preference for apps. That runs contrary to data from comScore and Nielsen, which both show mobile apps dominating time spent on mobile devices (4 out of 5 mobile minutes or 80 percent of time, respectively).

Source: RadiumOne (11/12)

The category of apps most popular among these survey respondents was social networking. This is consistent with other data, and reinforces all the discussion about Facebook usage shifting to mobile.

In addition to social apps being the most popular category these users were influencing and being influenced by social activity on mobile devices:

1. 77 percent of respondents said personal recommendations, sales and offers were major influencers in their purchasing decisions

2. 50 percent indicated they shared coupons, sales information and ads at least once a month, with 19 percent of that group saying that they shared this type of information 3 or more times per month

The data also indicate that mobile devices are heavily used for video consumption (an already established fact) and as “second screens” during conventional TV viewing:

1. 77 percent of survey respondents said they watched video on their smartphones at least daily, with almost 40 percent of these people saying they watched between one and five videos daily on mobile devices on a daily basis

2. 56 percent (37 percent smartphones, 19 percent tablets) used mobile devices while watching traditional TV

This is just one more survey that reinforces the point that mobile devices are a critical part of the marketing mix. Indeed, ad-response data from Media.net show that campaigns run across multiple screens provide a lift to PC conversions vs. PC only campaigns.

The sample size of the RadiumOne survey was not disclosed.