Crisp Wireless Releases Latest Crisp Wireless Index with Review of 2008 Mobile Web Trends

MARCH 30, 2009 - Crisp Wireless, the leading provider of mobile advertising and mobile content solutions for premium media companies and brands, today announced results from its Year-In-Review Crisp Wireless Index™ (CWI). The index is a barometer of consumer activity online via mobile devices based on usage across the Crisp Wireless Premium Publisher Network, which represents over half of the mobile Internet traffic (based on unique visits) in the U.S., from January 1 through December 31, 2008.

The CWI identified a number of interesting mobile trends and statistics, including:

  • In 1Q08, Blackberry represented 17.33% of traffic and iPhone only 9.1%, but by year-end, Blackberry represented 23.98% and iPhone had grown to 22.98%.
  • The percentage of traffic driven from mobile search engines is slowly growing from 7.51% in 1Q08 to 8.85% in 4Q08, while the percentage of traffic coming from carrier decks has continued to drop from 53.4% in 1Q08 to 36.91% in 4Q08. More and more mobile web traffic is going “off-deck,” opening the mobile advertising channel to more inventory and fewer restrictions.
  • Sites drawing the highest percentages of visits per unique are in the TV & Entertainment, with 4.47 and Men/Sports categories, with 5.32 in 4Q08.
  • The number of searches, although still representing a significant portion of mobile search, for a specific property or site name is slowly decreasing from 1Q08-4Q08, 29.5% to 25% respectively, corresponding with the relatively slow growth of mobile search.
  • Online services and local categories have the highest percentage of traffic driven by mobile search; however, women’s lifestyle has shown a surge in the second half of 2008 registering 21.53% in 3Q08 and 19.35% in 4Q08 up from 2.54% in 2Q08.

The latest CWI shows that the Entertainment category registered the most searched terms in mobile during the last three quarters of 2008 with “Movies/Movie Listings” coming in at number one. Following “Movies/Movie Listings” in 4Q08 were “Jennifer Hudson,” “mobile,” and “Barack Obama.”

“The Crisp Wireless Index is the only study that looks at actual consumer behavior of a large portion of mobile Internet users in the United States and is becoming the industry standard for providing a reliable measure of mobile web trends and consumer activity via mobile devices,” said Boris Fridman, CEO, Crisp Wireless. “The information provided within this particular report was gathered from select data captured from across Crisp Wireless’ Mobile Publisher Network of over 200 premium mobile web sites and its more than 30 million mobile web visitors. By tracking mobile usage across our vast network of sites, we are arming advertisers with information that helps them make informed mobile inventory buying decisions.”

The Crisp Wireless Index™ is a measure of unique mobile interactions within and across key mobile content categories including but not limited to national news, local TV news, local newspapers, magazines, online services, women’s lifestyle, men’s, sports, , and entertainment. To subscribe to receive quarterly updates to the Crisp Wireless Index, register at http://www.crispwireless.com/analytics/register.

About Crisp Wireless

Crisp Wireless powers mobile websites and provides advertising services for the largest, premier mobile publisher networks, attracting one-third of mobile web users in the United States across channels such as news, local, sports, and women’s lifestyle. The Crisp Wireless Publisher Network has more than 200 mobile web sites from more than 45 major media companies and their brands including TIME Mobile, The Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, A&E Television Networks, USA Today, Discovery Communications, and others.