Real-time mobile advertising clicks measured over the Christmas period by Adfonic across its global mobile advertising marketplace show a shift in consumer engagement with mobile browsing and app usage over the holiday season.

Adfonic saw mobile clicks for the first half of the month reach a peak on Sunday 11 December, echoing 2010, when the highest volume of mobile clicks before the Christmas week itself was recorded on Sunday 12 December. However, 2011 saw a significantly earlier start to Christmas related browsing and app usage, perhaps driven by increased mobile activity resulting from the significant discounting many retailers unveiled at the start of December.

Click volumes increased from a higher base at the start of the month, to rise by 23 per cent on Sunday 11 December.  In 2010, volumes only started to increase from 6 December and grew rapidly to reach over 400 per cent above the beginning of the month, on Sunday 12 December.

Adfonic’s data mirrors wider industry trends which have seen the ‘Mobile Sunday’ effect (the second Sunday of December representing a peak in mobile browsing and app usage), in contrast to desktop-based browsing, which typically peaks on the second Monday of December. Adfonic believes the 24-hour advance on mobile can be attributed to consumers using mobile devices both over wi-fi from home, as well as over 3G connections while out shopping.

The heightened activity throughout December that Adfonic’s figures reveal is indicative of the fact that consumers are generally spending more time on mobile devices in the run up to Christmas. In addition, says Adfonic, increased usage in December can be attributed to consumers researching product information, comparing prices and checking store locations whilst Christmas shopping on the high street. 

After the Mobile Sunday peak, clicks across the Adfonic network began to rise again in Christmas week and had surpassed the levels seen on Sunday 11 December by Thursday 22nd, before continuing to rise steadily through to Christmas Day.

Christmas Day itself was the busiest day of the year for mobile clicks; volumes were 36 per cent higher than the early month peak on 11 December 2011, and 50 per cent higher than the average for December. A year ago it was Boxing Day that saw the most clicks, but it seems that this season, the fact that Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, combined with the popularity of smartphones and Tablets as gifts, and an even earlier start to the January Sales led more consumers to use their mobile devices to engage with apps and to hunt for sales bargains on December 25th.

In the UK, Christmas morning saw a frenzy of activity between 9am and noon, with the hour from 10am to 11am seeing the most clicks in a single hour during December. Clicks then began to decrease between noon and 3pm, as people sat down to enjoy their Christmas lunch. Adfonic says this morning spike in activity suggests that instead of simply exchanging presents, UK consumers took advantage of the time on Christmas morning to use newly-opened smartphones and Tablets to browse the mobile web and download must-have apps.

“Our data highlights the upsurge in mobile clicks from much earlier in December, compared to last year, and also suggests that consumers began browsing for January Sales bargains earlier than ever before,” says Adfonic CMO, Paul Childs. “The increase in clicks on Christmas day itself is yet another indicator of the enormous popularity of smartphone and Tablet devices as Christmas gifts and the increasing amounts of time we are all spending engaging with mobile sites and apps.”

The data used in the research is drawn from analysis of Adfonic’s global mobile advertising marketplace, comprising 10,000 mobile publishers that reach a unique monthly audience in excess of 100m mobile users. Adfonic’s marketplace generates in excess of 20bn advertising requests each month for brand advertisers including Warner Bros, Peugeot and McDonalds. Adfonic is able to use its real-time tracking tools to segment and analyse data on an hour-by-hour basis and according to a wide range of variables.