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Mobile traffic boosts total audience of top Internet sites

By Amy Lee

Internet browsing on a mobile device grows the audience of many top Internet sites by 13 percent, according to a Nielsen Company study released on May 1. Some sites, such as those devoted to weather and entertainment, saw mobile users lift overall audience totals by 22 percent, based on combined data culled from Nielsen Online and Nielsen Mobile. (I found this interesting, as the two sites I check most regularly are an admittedly cheesy gossip blog and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to get the weather. It appears I’m not alone!) Shopping sites, however, received the least lift from mobile browsing due to duplication of PC-based and mobile audiences.

The cross-platform insights come from TotalWeb, a new report from Nielsen that integrates data from Nielsen Mobile and Nielsen Online to show the unduplicated, unique audience for more than 200 leading Internet sites across the PC and mobile Internet space, according to this Nielsen Company release.

What’s more, the data revealed that mobile users visit Web sites on their mobile devices that differ from those they visit on their home computers. The study found a small, but undoubtedly growing, audience turning to their mobile device for a regular fix of weather, games and entertainment. I count myself among them, as I bought a Motorola Q around Christmastime this past winter, mostly because I needed instant access to my email account. But I often browse Internet Explorer and search for news on Google. I have favorite sites bookmarked, and actually find I browse most often when I’m traveling via train into downtown Chicago. A mobile entertainment and news device, aka “my phone,” really helps pass the time on the long commute.

This audience boost gleaned through the mobile platform may seem like a small jump now, but my guess is this is just the beginning of what will eventually mature into a decent-sized chunk of consistent visitors on many leading Web sites. “The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” Jeff Herrmann, Nielsen’s vice president of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile, said in a company statement.

Monday, May 5th, 2008 Filed under Industry research, Multimedia journalism |