When one thinks of the most wired, mobile-dependent demos, Foursquare-loving urban hipsters or text-obsessive teens spring to mind. But moms, not so much.
But according to Babycenter's 2011 Mobile Mom Report, moms with smartphones like the iPhone spend more time with the mobile Web (6.1 hours a day) than the PC-based Web (4.1 hours).
Of course, more moms still have vanilla-featured phones than smartphones. And
among nonsmartphone moms, PC-based Web consumption dominates mobiles—an average of 5.4 hours per day spent surfing the Web on a PC vs. 2.5 for the mobile Web. Still, with smartphone penetration on the rise (and $50 iPhones now on the market), the demos media consumption is likely to become far more mobile-centric.
Moms are also surprisingly big on mobile apps favoring those for health information, shopping, diet and exercise, said Tina Sharkey, BabyCenter's chairman and global president, during a presentation at the Time Warner Center on Tuesday in New York. They are also overindexed for mobile social networking versus the general population, found the report.
For its study, BabyCenter surveyed 5,000 moms on the Web and conducted extensive in-person interviews with 32 women who also produced text and video logs of their consumption habits and attitudes.
Sharkey argued that the report's conclusions have major implications for marketers—who have generally taken nothing but baby steps when it comes to mobile advertising. “You gotta build mobile into your marketing mix,” she said. “Mobile has thrown the [traditional] purchase funnel for a loop.”
According to BabyCenter's report, 46 percent of moms claim to have taken an action due to a mobile ad.
