Mobile’s dominance in the digital economy is often taken for granted, but it is the prime driver for the amount of time people spend in digital media.
A recent report on the state of digital audiences by cross-platform measurement company comScore said that the average American spends almost three hours every day on mobile. According to comScore’s 2017 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus report, total digital media usage has increased by 40% in the last three years, with total monthly mobile usage time hitting the one trillion minute mark back in March 2016.
Mobile now accounts for seven out of 10 minutes spent in digital media, the report said. Mobile apps alone drive 60% of all digital time spent, with smartphone apps the main driver of digital media consumption. Around 51% of all digital media time is spent on a smartphone app, a increase of 16% since 2013.
Mobile has been gobbling up market share since 2013.
In essence, this is related to a decline in the amount of time spent on desktop. Three years ago, desktop commanded a 47% share of digital media time—that has now dropped to 31%. One in eight U.S. Internet users are now not just mobile first but mobile only, a demographic that is reportedly influenced by women aged between 18- and 24-years-old.
“The mobile-only Internet user is an emerging group within the digital media ecosystem,” said comScore. “Millennials are more likely to rely exclusively on their mobile devices, with the heaviest skews occurring among college-aged adults and females.”
Digital media audiences have increased significantly in the last three years, with the top 1,000 properties averaging 16.8 million viewers per month.
This increase can be traced to mobile viewing habits that showed a growth rate of 127% since December 2013, the report said. On the flip side, the number of digital media properties that hit significant visitor thresholds has slowed in the last 12 months, with a year-on-year increase of 2% in terms of audiences of 50 million viewers or more.
The top digital media properties are the usual suspects— the ones owned by Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Google-owned sites lead the way with an average of 247 million unique visitors every month. Facebook and Yahoo are the only other properties in the U.S. that average more than 200 million monthly viewers; 209 million and 206 million, respective.