Mobile advertisers should pay attention to the time of day

A little nugget of research got pushed through to me today from German mobile advertiser apprupt. We’ve covered this advertiser quite a few times in the past – its evolution has taken it from being an affiliate application store, to a multi-channel advertiser that shifts applications through Germany’s most popular mobile media sites. Today, it reveals some interesting info about how German mobile Internet usage waxes and wanes during the day.

What’s the story?

Mobile Internet usage is growing fast in Germany – slightly above the global average. But apprupt has been watching the time of day at which people use their devices for mobile browsing during the day, and has noted two particular peak times during most days, and an overall surge of use on Sundays:

On weekdays, most people access the mobile web between 7 and 9am in the morning, as they wake up, get ready for work and travel to work. Mobile Internet use drops off by 30% after that, with a few fluctuations during the day leading up to the busiest period of the day – between 7 and 9pm in the evening. The biggest peak during the day is from 8 to 9pm. But even after that, usage doesn’t drop off too much. For exempt, there are more users on-line between 11pm and midnight than there are between 2 and 3pm in the afternoon.

And, without doubt, the most usage is seen on Sunday. There are generally 50% more people on-line during the 8 to 9pm peak on a Sunday than there are during a weekday. And the morning surge is pushed back (thanks to a nice Sunday morning lie-in, I assume) to 9 to 11am.

What we think?

First off, this study only touches on iOS users. But there are a lot of those, and they’re a pretty representative bunch when it comes to mobile Internet usage.

Being able to target by time of day is one of those important little things that mobile advertisers need to be able to do – especially if they’re advertising over a cost-per-action network. You want to be able to streamline your advertising spend so you get the maximum effectiveness for your buck. So if you’re advertising on the mobile web in Germany, and you only want to target a few hours per week… start with Sunday evening.