This morning at ILM West in San Francisco, Gillian Heltai (Senior Director with comScore) presented some great data on mobile usage in the US.

The data reveals what she described as a “perfect storm” for local based services and advertising.

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First – let’s talk technology:

  • 3 out of every 4 mobile subscribers own a device with GPS functionality.
  • Over 1 in 3 own a smartphone – and in 2013 that number will reach 50%.

Both of those numbers are huge for local based services! GPS allows local targeting to be more accurate than non-mobile. And smart phones are built for searching and consuming content.

For local services there is more good news: comScore discovered that 88 million mobile subscribers in the US access local content on a mobile device, up 28% from a year ago.

What are people doing on their mobile phone browsers?  They’re searching!

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In addition, if look at the details of the slide above you can see that a number of the top activities are local activities. More great news for local services!

The top activity in mobile browsing is search.

  • comScore found that mobile search usage grew 25% year-over-year.
  • 61% of users search almost every day or at least once a week.
  • And 82% of mobile search users own a GPS capable device!

Again – this is great news for local services trying to reach customers on mobile devices.  And it means that mobile advertising is increasingly important.

I hope you found this information helpful. Happy local/mobile searching!

David Kline | Microsoft Advertising