A new Morgan Stanley report on Google has found that US mobile browser traffic is still twice the size of the app audience, and has grown 61% per year, compared against average app audience have growth of 51% in the same period.
While all the hype has been around apps and the rising amount of time users spend in them, the mobile web, according to the report, "is still largely a browser based world". For marketers, this means that despite the rise of app use, your brand's mobile web presence remains a critical - if not the critical - factor in your digital customer experience journey. If your website's not optimized for mobile, search and not delivering a great user experience, you're likely missing out as the web becomes an increasingly mobile experience.
The Rise of the App Age?
But what about those app stats - didn't comScore just recently publish a report which showed 87%of all time spent on mobile in the US was spent in apps? They did, and that data is also correct - the importance variance is in the detail.
You see, while US mobile browser traffic is on rise, and is rising faster than app traffic, the amount of time spent in apps is incredibly high. As noted in Morgan Stanley's report:
"Note that this over-indexing toward browsers is the opposite of what most investors we speak with expect, who often ask about the "app-lification" of consumer behavior as we transition from desktop to mobile. We attribute this difference to the most commonly cited industry report on app and browser behavior published by Flurry, which asserts that nearly 90% of time spent on mobile (across iOS and Android devices) occurs in app. But Flurry's breakdown of how people are spending their time on mobile matters, as we see that the app time spent data is skewed upward by gaming (32% of time) and social (a total of 29% of time between Facebook at 17%, Other messaging at 10% and Twitter at 2%)."
So while people are spending more time in apps, they're only using a few, specific apps, so the 'traffic', or unique visits to an app are low. As explained by Venture Beat:
"Mobile users spend massive numbers of hours in Subway Surfer or Game of War, blowing 80 percent of their time in just five favorite apps, while they might also visit 10 or 15 mobile web sites of companies that they're checking out, and spend just a few moments on each. Mobile "traffic" - read unique visitors - are up on mobile web, but mobile time is also up on apps."
So both measures are correct - people are spending more time browsing and more time in apps on mobile. While, logically, that's not such a surprise, it does add a different perspective to how marketers should be focusing their efforts and helps build greater understanding of time spent online.
These findings are in line with various other reports from Nielsen and Forrester, the latter finding that while consumers are spending 85% of their mobile web time in apps, only five apps see heavy use.
Specific App-lication
Morgan Stanley's research looks deeper into the specifics of app use, finding that only 12 of the top 50 US mobile properties have a larger mobile app audience than mobile browser audience.
From the report:
"50% of these app-traffic dominated properties are "daily habits" like email (Gmail and Yahoo Mail), checking the weather (Weather Channel), monitoring stock performance (Yahoo Finance), looking up maps/directions (Google Maps) and searching online (Google Search). Of the other 50%, 3 are "social sharing" sites (Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest) and 3 are streaming media sites (Pandora, Netflix, YouTube)... which you could argue are also daily habits for many Americans."
What Morgan Stanley are essentially saying is that while app use does dominate time spent, to really capitalize on that market, you need for your branded app to become a 'daily habit', to have your app provide some level of utility that people refer to every day. The argument here is that while there's much being made about app use, and the reach potential of apps, focusing all your marketing efforts into a branded app might not be the best way to go, and discovery traffic is still more prominently happening via web browsing.
The report does, however, include a specific breakdown on Facebook app and browser use.
"Facebook's U.S. browser site now gets more traffic than its mobile app, and both its app and browser audiences are larger than any other U.S. mobile property"
Despite the dominance of Facebook's app audience, it still gets more browser 'traffic', which relates to unique searches.
Future Focus
The report also underlines the current state of mobile marketing, and how 93% of the top 30 Retailers are seeing over 50% of their mobile traffic growth come from browsers.
The important point being underlined here is that your mobile web experience needs focus, and remains a critical point in the customer discovery process. While apps are also an important part of the mobile eco-system, their focus may be being over-indexed by reports on time spent, which would suggest that all your focus should be in apps. That's clearly not the case - in its specific thoughts on Google and Google's position in the mobile market:
"We're often asked about the Google mobile "app-lification" risk - consumers migrating to mobile apps rather than mobile web browsers and, in effect, bypassing Google search. Our analysis shows that Google search is still positioned to win on mobile as U.S. mobile traffic in 3 of the top search spend categories - Retail, Finance/Insurance, and Travel, which in aggregate make up an estimated 38% of the total U.S. search market- materially over-indexes toward browsers."
That said, given the amount of time spent in apps - as opposed to unique traffic - it also makes sense for brands to consider advertising within more popular apps to reach audiences where they're spending their time. Of course, that doesn't mean all advertisers should be looking to reach audiences in gaming apps, where the most mobile time is being spent, but it's worth considering your audiences and where their attentions lie, then seeking to reach them on the most relevant platform for purpose (where possible).
The report offers an interesting perspective on the current mobile market and where the focus of businesses should be directed, and underlines the need to keep in mind that while apps are popular, mobile browsing remains a crucial element that needs to be factored into your wider marketing efforts.