Based on the “2008 Mobile Attitude & Usage Study” conducted by Synovate for the Mobile Marketing Association, U.S. consumers’ interest in mobile marketing is the same as it was last year.

In fact, the percentage of consumers interested in mobile marketing has remained even for the past four years of the study:

• 6 percent of those surveyed are ‘highly interested’ in mobile marketing;
• 20 percent are ‘moderately interested’; and
• 75 percent are not interested.

Of course that’s what people say. What they do is another matter. It appears that in 2008 mobile commerce participation rates were higher than in the past three years. Overall, 6 percent of consumers participate in mobile marketing efforts.

According to the research, the top mobile marketing categories were:

• Text-to-win or voting campaigns: 48 percent
• Ringtone downloads: 28 percent
• Status alerts: 25 percent
• Sales alerts: 24 percent
• Mobile coupons: 22 percent
• Product information: 21 percent
• Mobile customer care: 13 percent
• Location-based information: 6 percent

The 2008 Mobile Attitude & Usage Study study involved Synovate conducting 1,405 online interviews using a nationally representative consumer online panel of over 1.5 million households.

Source: Enid Burns, “Mobile Marketing Interest Unchanged Since Last Year”, The ClickZ Network, November 18, 2008

Research firm comScore has reported that online spending in the United States in October 2008 grew by only 1 percent over October 2007, the lowest monthly growth rate since comScore began tracking e-commerce in 2001.

comScore attributes the anaemic growth level to lower spending by low-to-middle income earners, with households earning less than $50,000 exhibiting negative spending growth compared to a year ago.

The slowdown comes after 6 consecutive months of slowing growth in e-commerce sales. comScore says that retail e-commerce growth rates have fallen from a height of 28 percent in August 2007 to a growth rate of just 1 percent in October 2008. October represents the sixth consecutive month this year of slowing growth rates.

Source: comScore, “U.S. Retail E-Commerce Growth Slows to 1 Percent in October as Concerns about Inflation, Jobs and the Financial Markets Cause Consumers to Curb Spending”, Press Release, November 18, 2008

A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project released in October 2008 indicates that families with a married couple and young children are more likely than other household types to have mobile phones and subscribe to the Internet.

Almost 90 percent of married-with-children households surveyed owned multiple mobile phones, with almost half owning three or more. And while 52 percent of all households in the U.S. have broadband Internet at home, around 67 percent of the families surveyed had broadband.

Source: eMarketer, “Online and Mobile Family Connections”, eMarketer, October 21, 2008

Wow - a chunky 20 percent of prime time television is now being watched online.

What’s more, according to a May 2008 study by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), online consumers of prime time television are 55 percent female and 45 percent male, and tend to be financially better off than most. Households earning $80,000 per year or more are 56 percent more likely to watch a network show on the Internet. The largest single segment of online television viewers comprise white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25-44.

Also interesting is the finding that more people are watching entire episodes of prime time TV online, rather than just bits they may have missed on television. Increasingly viewers seem to be switching between either media, with a substantial 41 percent of those surveyed first watching a show on TV, then viewing another episode online.

Seems like more people simply want to watch their favorite TV shows at a time that suits them. Rather than being home and in front of the box at a certain time, they are valuing the convenience offered by the web, where they can download and view such shows when it suits them.

It’s no surprise that more affluent people are tending to watch more prime time television on the web either. They are more likely to have broadband Internet access to facilitate quick video downloading or streaming, and to have media centers which allow them to watch Internet content on their televisions…

Sources: Nathania Johnson, “20% of Primetime Television Now Watched Online”, Search Engine Watch, July 29, 2008

Research by PEW/Internet reveals that over half of U.S. adults now have broadband Internet connections at home, with the percentage of adult broadband users increasing from 47 percent in March 2007 to 55 percent in April 2008.

This follows on from a rise in home broadband adoption from 42 percent in March 2006 to 47 percent in March 2007.

Meanwhile, when asked to describe their broadband connection, 29 percent of home broadband users said they had a premium broadband connection which gave them faster Internet access, 54 percent said they had a basic broadband service, and 16 percent didn’t know what kind of broadband they had.

Growth in broadband adoption was flat among poor and African Americans, with just 25 percent of low-income Americans (those with household incomes of $20,000 p.a. or less) having home broadband at home, slightly down from the 28 percent figure reported in March 2007. Similarly, while 43 percent of African Americans have home broadband, this reflects only a small rise from the 40 percent of African Americans who had home broadband in March 2007.

The biggest growth in home broadband usage was among Americans aged 50 years and over, whose home broadband usage jumped by 26 percent from 2007 to 2008. Half of Americans aged between 50 and 64 now have broadband at home, while 19 percent of Americans aged 65 and older have home broadband access.

Lower to middle income earning Americans also switched to broadband in droves, with households earning between $20,000 and $40,000 p.a. increasing their use of home broadband by 24 percent between 2007 and 2008. Now, some 45 percent of people in that income bracket have broadband at home.

Broadband penetration among rural households is growing, with 38 percent of Americans living in rural areas now using home broadband, up from 31 percent in 2007. This constitutes a growth rate of 23 percent from 2007 to 2008. In U.S. towns and cities, 57 percent of urban residents have home broadband and 60 percent of suburban residents have such Internet access.

As can be expected, as broadband usage grows, so too does dial-up Internet usage decline. Now, just 10 percent of Americans use dial-up internet connections at home.

All this is valuable information for Internet marketers. Want to put up that bandwidth hogging video clip on your site? Well, depending on your target market you may be reaching – or alienating - most of your target market.

Source: John B. Horrigan, Associate Director for Research, “Home Broadband Adoption 2008″, PEW/Internet, July 2008