At the end of last month Openwave Systems published a report highlighting key mobile internet usage trends in North America, based on findings derived from its Openwave Mobile Analytics product. Key themes that Mobile Analytics uncovered included upticks in social networking site usage suggestive of a new preferred method of communication with the potential to unseat traditional forms of messaging such as email for a particular segment of subscribers; an analysis of mobile advertising click-through rates (CTR) that showed clear advantages of targeted promotions; and the growing trend in accessing mobile classifieds via the mobile device.

Amongst the key findings:

Social Networking Usurping Traditional Messaging as Communications Tool
Social networking remains the number one area of interest to mobile internet users with Facebook and MySpace being the top two search terms on both Google and Yahoo! OneSearch. In terms of average hits per session, MySpace leads Facebook by nearly 46 percent, suggesting that MySpace could become the preferred choice of mobile communication for a particular segment of an operator subscriber base and displace some of the most frequently used email offerings. The social networking trend presents a unique opportunity for operators to partner with these leading social networking sites through co-branding efforts with a view to generating incremental revenues from messaging generated from the social networking sites.

Mobile Advertising – Targeting Improves Click-Through Rate
Regarding mobile advertising, Openwave found that while AdMob served the most ads (nearly 7 times more than the nearest competitor), it also had the lower click through rate in comparison to BuzzCity and Microsoft. AdMob’s lower CTR could be the result of generic ads that are not targeted or relevant to the subscriber. Operators can play a vital role in the mobile advertising value chain by providing aggregated data on subscriber behaviour and preferences to ad networks, which could result in better targeting of subscribers that could lead to high eCPM rates and better results for publishers, advertisers, operators and ultimately the subscribers.

Mobile Access to Classified Advertising is a Key Growth Area
Openwave Mobile Analytics also uncovered that Craigslist ranked number 7 within the top 10 search terms on Google, suggesting a trend towards mobile classifieds for jobs, housing, bargain priced goods and services during the current economic downturn.

It would be a useful exercise comparing these results to data from European mobile usage research. Who knows, we might even do the comparisons ourselves when we have a few minutes spare …

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