The Daily Graph: How Do People Use Mobile Apps?

The exponential growth in the audience for mobile apps presents the next frontier in advertising.

In a recent report, Flurry, a mobile analytics company, reveals how people use different media throughout the day. The chart above compares the relative percentage of the total user base that is reached by each medium at a given time of the day (with prime time highlighted in grey). Unsurprisingly, TV attracts the largest relative percentage of audience share during prime time. More notable is the fact that relative mobile app usage isn't too far off, and that it's got higher usage levels earlier in the day. Moreover, mobile app usage is relatively higher than internet usage throughout the day.

So What?

If you're looking for new ways to maximize the reach of your advertising campaigns, mobile apps present huge opportunities. To put into perspective, as of June 2011, there are 52.4 million subscribers in the US with iOS and Android smartphones, according to comScore. Following the chart above, that means a whopping 15.7 million iOS and Android subscribers use mobile apps at 10:00am everyday (and even more come prime time). That's probably about the number of Americans who tune into American Idol.

While advertising on mobile apps might not deliver quite the same emotional response that traditional TV ads do, it does provide considerable targeting opportunities and measurability at a fraction of the price. Sounds like a wake-up call. There's an app for that too.