- Mark Dolliver

While mobile marketing is growing briskly, the pattern of consumers' engagement with it remains uneven from one demographic cohort to another. A BIGresearch study examines the current composition of mobile marketing's audience. And, even as such marketing expands, the research detects continued and growing consumer distaste for many forms of it.

In a reprise of the male skew of the Internet's earlier years, the audience for mobile marketing has more men than women at this stage. Fifty-eight percent of mobile-marketing's users are men, according to BIGresearch's study (based on data as of June). The average age of the mobile-marketing audience is 39.2. Users report higher-than-average engagement with online social media: 38 percent "regularly" use Facebook and 23 percent say the same of MySpace, while 13 percent are regular users of Twitter.

The report has one ominous finding for mobile marketers: "Since June of 2008, the percentage of people who don't like mobile marketing has increased." More specifically, 67 percent don't like text ads (vs. 64 percent last year), 60 percent don't like voicemail ads (up from 57 percent) and 60 percent don't like video ads (up from 56 percent).

There has been a similarly modest increase in the number saying they regard such advertising as "an invasion of privacy" (from 50 percent to 52 percent). And the number saying marketers must get permission before sending such mobile ads has risen as well, from 56 percent in 2008 to 58 percent in this year's poll.

Elsewhere in the report, BIGresearch notes that mobile marketing's audience has an above-average propensity to buy consumer electronics. Twenty-two percent said they plan to buy a computer during the next six months, 20 percent plan to buy a TV set and 11 percent intend to buy a digital camera.

See also: "Mobile Content Demand Set to Soar"