Mobile Web traffic going off-deck: Research

By Giselle Tsirulnik

May 1, 2009

Mobile usage on the rise

In the first quarter of 2008, BlackBerry represented 17.33 percent of mobile Web traffic and iPhone only 9.1 percent, but by year-end, BlackBerry represented 23.98 percent and iPhone grew to 22.98 percent.

This was the key finding from the Crisp Wireless Index's Year-In-Review. The index is a barometer of consumer activity online via mobile devices based on usage across the Crisp Wireless Premium Publisher Network, which represents more than half of the mobile Internet traffic (based on unique visits) in the U.S., from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2008.

"If we can track users from one site to another, we can start building a profile of that user without using any personal data," said Andy Sullivan, vice president of client services for Crisp Wireless, New York.

"It's just my behavior -- knowing what sites they are going to, knowing what content they are consuming -- it just helps us build a profile of the user in mobile," he said.

The percentage of traffic driven from mobile search engines is slowly growing from 7.51 percent in the first quarter of 2008 to 8.85 percent in the fourth quarter of the same year, while the percentage of traffic coming from carrier decks has continued to drop from 53.4 percent to 36.91 percent year-over-year.

More and more mobile Web traffic is going "off-deck," opening the mobile advertising channel to more inventory and fewer restrictions.

Sites drawing the highest percentages of visits per unique are in the TV and Entertainment sectors, with 4.47 percent, and the Men/Sports category, with 5.32 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The number of searches for a specific property or site name, although still representing a significant portion of mobile search at 4.5 percent, is slowly decreasing with the relatively slow growth of mobile search.

Online services and local categories have the highest percentage of traffic driven by mobile search; however, women's lifestyle has shown a surge in the second half of 2008, registering 21.53 percent in the third quarter last year and 19.35 percent in the fourth, up from 2.54 percent in the second quarter.

"I think I see things growing," Mr. Sullivan said. "I think we are going to see the high-traffic phones getting more of the traffic -- the BlackBerry, iPhone. I think we are going to see more of those. As contracts expire I see people going more towards these new platforms.

"I think we are also going to see more visits per user," he said. -- We saw a slow increase in visits per user in 2008. But with people getting more comfortable with the medium we are going to see more visits per user.

"And I think what goes hand in hand with that is increased mobile search engine usage and that is because people will start emulating some of their Web usage where people start discovering more content through search engines."