What Canadians do with their smartphones
According to a report released by IAB Canada today, Canadians’ adoption of smartphones is still growing, as are the advertising opportunities.
The IAB’s Mobile in Canada: A Summary of Current Facts and Trends Report indicates that nearly 85% of Canadians were mobile subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 81% the year before.
Of those Canadian mobile subscribers, 45% use smartphones, placing Canada third on that metric behind the U.K and Spain–and ahead of the U.S.
Almost 50% of Canadian mobile subscribers are mobile media users, the report states. Only Japan, the U.K and the U.S. have higher rates of mobile media usage.
The IAB describes itself as “fully dedicated to the development and promotion of digital/interactive advertising in Canada.”
The report also investigated the activities Canadians used their mobile devices to engage in–85% reported using downloaded apps, making it the highest-ranked activity, with browsing (76%), e-mailing (69%) and accessing social networks and blogs (59%) completing the top four.
The top-ranked content categories for mobile users were weather (18%), maps (17%), news (14%), sports (12%) and entertainment news (10%).
Tablet usage is also on the rise among Canadians, reaching 10% of adults by the fall of 2011–less than two years after the launch of Apple’s iPad in Canada.
The IAB found that, with mobile, smartphone and tablet use increasing in Canada, advertising opportunities are also growing. Mobile ad placement and spend in Canada was $46.6 million in 2010 (the most recent year included in the report), up 105% from 2009.
$17.1 million of this spending was on mobile search advertising, while $15.6 million went to mobile display and sponsorship and $12.5 million was devoted to mobile messaging.
The report offered some evidence that mobile advertising is paying off. It said 28% of those surveyed said they recalled seeing ads on their mobile devices and 16% had used them to scan a QR or bar code.
IAB Canada recommended that, to maximize the value of mobile as an advertising medium, marketers should conduct return-on-investment studies and be more active in the collection and presentation of campaign data and metrics.
Other findings showed that Rogers, at 36.1%, was the market leader in terms of wireless subscribers, ahead of Bell (28.7%) and Telus Mobility (28.4%).
RIM’s BlackBerry operating system (33%) led Apple (31%) and Google (28%) in terms of use by smartphone subscribers.
More details from the report can be found here.
