Internet Marketing Blog by Noon-an-Night

Interestingly, after I made my post yesterday about mobile and comScore understanding the importance of it, I came across another article today that centered around users’ mobile browsing activities.

The article was published by BusinessWeek and titled Welcome to Weekend Web. The article presented some interesting information directly from Google about the difference between users’ browsing patterns on weekdays and weekends:

“At Google, we see the majority of our desktop traffic [in the U.S.] during weekdays,” says Matt Waddell, chief of staff for Google Mobile. “On mobile, the situation is completely reversed.” Mobile browsing surged 89% in the past year, with mobile page views increasing by 127%, according to researcher M:Metrics. The increase reflects growing availability of all-you-can eat data plans and increasingly sophisticated handheld devices such as the Apple iPhone.

Another interesting point (all the data in the article was provided by M:Metrics, the company acquired by comScore) is that the top two sites visited by mobile users during the weekend are Craigslist and eBay. The Weather Channel and MapQuest also rank in the top ten. The reason this is particularly interesting is that these sites only rank (respectively) 9, 8, 26 and 35 during the week for users visiting the internet from a computer. Because of these variations, many major companies (such as eBay) are looking at ways to enhance their users’ mobile experience.

To really put things in perspective, just consider this quote from Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt:

mobile will be a larger business than the PC Web.

In addition to online video, one of the other things that I am extremely bullish on is mobile. While many people use the term mobile web instead of mobile, I think using the first term misses the entire point of mobile: there’s not going to be any distinction between the web and the “mobile web“. For example, with the exception of Flash, I can already access the entire internet in its original form via my iPhone.

In an acquisition that demonstrates the value many companies see in the mobile landscape, TechCrunch announced yesterday that comScore is purchasing M:Metrics. According to CrunchBase, M:Metrics is “a leader in mobile media measurement. They can track mobile visitors, pageviews, ads clicked and more.”

comScore is making the purchase for $44.3 million, in addition to 50,000 options of comScore stock.

As a result of the deal, comScore will acquire all three of M:Metrics’ major products:

MobiLens, a syndicated monthly online survey that captures overall mobile phone usage, including device information, data usage, media consumption and demographic characteristics of a representative sample of more than 40,000 mobile device users. MobiLens is available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

MeterDirect, the industry’s first on-device meter that passively measures the mobile Internet behavior and media consumption of more than 4,000 existing Smartphone panelists. The M:Metrics metering technology is compatible with more than 280 device models. MeterDirect is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

M:Ad, the first competitive tracking service for mobile advertising that continuously monitors clickable display advertising from a broad representative set of mobile Web destinations to reveal leading advertisers across a variety of market segments. M:Ad is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.

With the ability to now comprehensively track mobile activity, comScore should have no problem remaining one of the dominant sources for information about users’ internet activities and trends.