Despite a previous Ofcom report showing that for (UK) 16-24 year olds the mobile phone was the second most essential piece of media behind the TV and ahead of the PC, metrics firm Nielsen says that it’s really people aged 25+, and in particular 35+, who are most likely to be going online via their mobiles.
36% of mobile social network use is done by 35-54 year olds, with 34% being done by 25-34 year olds. By comparison, 18-24 year olds only account for 16%. One reason for this could in fact be that smartphones are still fairly expensive and out of the reach of many 18 year olds. And a lot of people aged 30+ will be issued a blackberry or other smartphone as part of their jobs.
On the Web as a whole, women tend to dominate in social media. Last year Rapleaf did a study all about women having more friends on social networks than men, while Royal Pingdom looked at 19 sites and found that 53% of users were female. Nielsen says that this trend is replicated on mobiles – 55% of users are women while 45% are men.
Are mobile marketers getting it wrong? Rather than trying to aim their mobile campaigns at 19 year old students, should they be turning their sights to 35 year old female business executives?
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