Unlocking App Audiences: The role of content and demographics in platform selection

Within this space, apps have thrived as an integrated means of accessing content on these platforms: in both the UK and US, apps account for around 80 percent of all mobile internet minutes.

Recruiting app audiences, however, can be particularly difficult: of all those who download any apps in a month (roughly a quarter of mobile subscribers):

• Half download 2 apps or fewer each month
• 1 in 4 download just one app in a month

But once this hurdle has been overcome, it is abundantly clear that users are comfortable performing multiple types of active and passive activities on their mobile devices. What also emerges from the data is that the type of content increasingly dictates the platform of choice, with location-sensitive activities predictably skewing more towards smartphone and more stationary media consumption activities skewing towards tablet.

The table below shows the share of app users by mobile platform within selected categories. A coupons, maps and weather skew heavily towards the almost omnipresent smartphone, and content consumption apps (particularly video) enjoy greater audiences on the larger screens of tablets.

Understanding and building upon these nuances can be crucial for both commercial and editorial development, particularly when taking the evaluation down to a more granular assessment involving demographics and individual publishers. Even remaining at the aggregated level, the audience distribution for the TV category of apps varies dramatically for 18 – 24 year old users compared to 45+ users, who heavily favour tablet devices:

By assessing which platforms certain audiences are selecting for selected categories, brands can develop apps and content that will recruit new users for a larger share of this increasing pot of digital time, or plan advertising activity to effectively reach consumers in these environments.

Read the full release, “Comscore Ranks Top UK Digital Media Properties for February 2015” here.
Download the full February UK Digital Market Overview report here.