It is increasingly difficult to talk about the Internet, or media and marketing in general, without the conversation quickly turning to mobile phones. Forty million mobile subscribers in the U.S., plus millions more across Europe and Asia, surf the web through a mobile phone each month—checking email, exploring their social network, making bank transactions and engaging in other web activities right from the palm of their hands.

Critical mass
How has mobile Internet so quickly become part of the consumer media experience for millions? Through a confluence of essential factors in mobile Internet adoption and use, mobile Internet reached a critical mass this year, offering a large and diverse enough base of users to support large-scale mobile marketing efforts. By no coincidence, consumer devices, networks, data packages, content and interest have come together to turn the mobile Internet into a mass medium that deserves the close attention of marketers and media companies.

Nielsen currently tracks mobile Internet penetration in 16 countries. Among these countries, the U.S. leads in mobile Internet penetration among wireless subscribers with 15.6%, followed by the U.K. (12.9%) and Italy (11.9%).

Of the countries tracked, Indonesia and New Zealand have some of the lowest mobile Internet penetration rates—just 1 out of 100 Indonesian subscribers uses the mobile Internet each month, and just 1.6% of New Zealand’s mobile subscribers do so.

In the U.S., mobile Internet has become a mass medium. As of May 2008, there were 40 million active users of the mobile Internet in the U.S., based on past 30-day usage. And this is just a subset of the 95 million U.S. mobile users who subscribed to the service but do not necessarily use it. To break it down:

• There were 254 million U.S. mobile subscribers in Q1 2008, according to CTIA, the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunication Industry
• According to Nielsen, 144 million (57%) U.S. mobile subscribers were data users in Q1 2008 (defined as those subscribers who used their phone for any data use, such as SMS [Short Message Service] text messaging or accessing the mobile Internet)
• Ninety-five million (37%) U.S. mobile subscribers paid for access to the mobile Internet, either as part of a subscription or as a transaction
• Forty million subscribers (15.6% in May 2008) were active users of mobile Internet services, using those services at least once on a monthly basis
• Mobile Internet use accounted for $1.7 billion in revenue in Q1 2008 (more than $5 billion in total revenue in 2007)

The audience using mobile Internet in the U.S. is demographically diverse enough to present marketing opportunities for all types of products and services.

Age & Sex
As of May 2008, the U.S. mobile Internet audience was still slightly more male than female—56% of mobile Internet users are male and 44% are female. The male bias of mobile Internet use is consistent across markets and is most pronounced in Germany, where 75% of mobile Internet users are male. In general, Internet users in European markets skew more male than those in the U.S.: 66% of mobile Internet users in the U.K. and Spain are male, and 63% of users in France and Italy are. In Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well, males are more likely than females to browse the mobile Internet.

Among users over the age of 13, the U.S. mobile Internet audience is about evenly split between those over the age of 35 (48%) and those under the age of 35 (52%). Additionally, there are approximately as many teenagers using the mobile Internet as there are persons over the age of 55 (5.1 million persons age 13–17 and 4.4 million persons 55 and older).

Engaging activities
On the mobile Internet, categories such as search, news, weather and sports perform well, as expected, but emerging mobile categories such as social networking and banking are attracting sizeable and growing audiences.

Portals, with brands such as Yahoo! and Google, were the most popular category of mobile websites as of May 2008. Thirty-six million unique mobile Internet users (89% of the mobile Internet audience) accessed portals over the mobile Internet. Email is the next most visited category, with 26 million unique users in May 2008 (65% of the mobile Internet audience).

In the coming year, the audience for mobile search, social networking and mobile banking should expand as publishers in each of these categories enhance their offerings and consumers show a growing interest in accessing such content over their mobile phone. As of May, there were already 12 million active users of mobile search, 5 million users of social networks and five million users of mobile banking websites.

Comparable contrasts
Mobile Internet users do not visit nearly the same number of individual sites as Internet users do over the PC. Nielsen Online reports that the PC Internet user visits more than 100 domains per month, on average. By contrast, the average mobile Internet user in the U.S. visited 6.4 individual websites per month in Q1 2008. This is slightly higher than with U.K. mobile users (5.5 per month) and German users (4.4 per month), but lower than in Italy where, on sophisticated handsets, mobile Internet users visit an average of 8.2 individual websites per month.

In the U.S., Yahoo! Mail has the largest unique audience of any mobile website. As of May 2008, Yahoo! Mail had 14 million unique monthly users. To put it differently, one-third of U.S. mobile Internet users access Yahoo! Mail over their phone each month. These users average 21 visits a month at a self-reported average of 10 minutes per visit.

Google Search and The Weather Channel are the next most popular mobile websites. Each month, nine million mobile subscribers access Google Search, and nine million mobile subscribers access The Weather Channel over their mobile phones.

Can you see me now?
Advertising is increasingly a part of the mobile Internet experience. By the end of 2007, 29% of U.S. mobile data users recalled seeing some form of advertising on their phone—including mobile Internet advertising, but also shortcode advertising via text messaging, mobile video advertising, mobile game advertising and other forms of mobile marketing. Among mobile Internet users, about a quarter of all subscribers (26%) recalled seeing some form of advertising while using the mobile Internet. This is consistent with the U.K., where 28% of mobile Internet users recall seeing ads while using browsing the mobile Internet. The U.K. is just behind Spain, where Nielsen Mobile reports that 34% of mobile Internet users recall seeing some form of mobile advertising.

Nielsen Mobile believes that the mobile Internet marketing opportunity has reached critical mass in 2008 and will grow substantially into 2009. But what does “critical mass” actually mean? The term “critical mass,” now widely used to refer to a milestone point attained in a population, closely related to the idea of a tipping point, comes from the world of nuclear science, where it describes the point at which fissile material is of sufficient mass to sustain a chain reaction.

Mobile Internet is today at a point of sufficient mass to sustain a chain reaction of rapid growth in consumer adoption, and in turn, mobile Internet marketing. As with a nuclear reaction, mobile Internet has reached critical mass through the modification of several different attributes. While critical mass in nuclear reactions is affected by attributes such as fuel, shape, temperature and density, mobile Internet adoption reached critical mass through a confluence of device availability, network speeds, content availability and, most importantly, consumer interest.

Today there are already 40 million active users of mobile Internet and there are individual mobile websites that attract a reach as large as major cable networks or leading newspapers and magazines. We expect this chain reaction to continue: as more consumers have positive mobile Internet user experiences, anchored by increasing device capability, speed and content optimization, other consumers will catch on. Operators will do their part to ensure that mobile data services become a more standard part of the wireless subscription. This growth will fundamentally expand the mobile Internet marketing opportunity, and if done correctly, enhance the overall consumer mobile experience greatly in 2008 and 2009.