Fifty-four percent of consumers using the mobile Web come from outside the United States and Europe, shedding light on the importance of developing targeted mobile advertising that reaches the intended consumer profile.

These findings from mobile Web technology specialist Bango show a shift in mobile Web traffic, from mature mobile markets such as the U.S. and Europe to the developing markets of China and India.

"We published the activities of the mobile Web and found that it is important to check [that] your ad network can target by operator, country and device," said Sarah Keefe, vice president of marketing for Bango, Cambridge, England. "Make sure you are targeting those who actually use the Internet via their phone. The need to target is increasingly, crucially important."

The top six countries accessing the mobile Web via Bango in January were Britain (25 percent), followed by India at 11 percent, the U.S. at 10 percent, South Africa at 8 percent, Indonesia at 7 percent and China at 6 percent.

China's mobile Web usage has risen sharply recently. The country is now in sixth place, from 19th just six months ago.

In total, Bango detects mobile Web users from over 190 countries.

"One of the major reasons for China's major shift is its large population and the fact that more people have mobile phones than PCs, making the handset their primary source for Internet access," Ms. Keefe said.

Bango's statistics imply that businesses need to be able to target their marketing efforts since wireless carriers in the same country can also have different consumers.

For example, a visitor who's identified as a Sprint subscriber might actually be a subscriber to Boost Mobile, which is a mobile virtual network operator on Sprint but caters to a completely different demographic.

Mobile marketers also need to be able to measure the success of their marketing campaigns, according to Bango. One way is to insert tracking links into the mobile site to identify traffic from advertising campaigns and search keywords.

Bango Analytics, for example, allows mobile site owners to connect their sites to the analytics service and start getting results free of charge.