Advertising Insights: Consumers Spend The Most Time In Social Apps

By Kyle Graden

If you do not use Facebook mobile advertising already, then you’re missing out! This week’s advertising insights reveal where consumers are spending their digital time.

Yahoo Advertising (via their Flurry acquisition) shows that 88% of all time spent with smartphones is spent in apps rather than in mobile web. This is an increase from 86% in 2013, 81% in 2012, and 72% in 2011, according to previous Flurry benchmark reports. This is great news for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, because as all three have strong mobile advertising offering within their apps. Advertisers should use the Facebook Audience Network to reach many of these app users with ads, or Facebook Mobile Newsfeed advertising to reach them in the number one mobile application.

These charts from App Annie show how dominant Facebook’s products specifically, and social and communication apps generally, are on mobile. When the previous graphic talks about the dominance of mobile apps, these are the apps that it means. Facebook-owned apps (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger) dominate the list of most popular non-gaming iPhone apps in top markets. This table from the report shows that Facebook products take three of four top slots in the US, UK, and Germany, as well as the number three spot in Japan and South Korea. Only in China does Facebook not have an app in the top four, because the service is blocked throughout the country.

For Android users, 50% of time spent on their smartphone in the US, UK, Germany, and South Korea and just under 50% in Japan is spent on social or communication apps.

The final insight for this week is a chart from the Global Web Index that shows just how active users are in social apps. Facebook users are the most frequent users, with over half of active users visiting the platform multiple times per day. For Twitter, more than 50% of active users visit the platform daily and 30% make several visits per day. A great way to target these frequent users is Facebook’s Reach and Frequency ad product. It allows you to set the number of times a user sees your ad; if a user doesn’t engage with the first ad they see from you, you can catch them when they visit back later in the day or week.

For more information about how to succeed with Facebook ads, read this case study in which Essence evaluates oCPM bidding for app installs across desktop and mobile.