Mobile Ads Getting High Response Rates: Report

With so much confusion about how much the mobile advertising market is worth and how fast it will develop (See post from Sunday), I wanted to ignore the latest report, but won't since it has some merit???it says that more U.S. mobile users are seeing ads and responding to them on their phones.

The Nielsen report said 23 percent of U.S. subscribers, or 58 million people were exposed to mobile advertising on their phones in the past 30 days, and that half, or about 28 million of all data users who recall seeing mobile advertising in the previous 30 days, said they responded to the ad in some way. The findings come from Nielsen Mobile's Mobile Advertising Report and are based on a survey of more than 22,000 active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice mobile service the last three months of 2007. Release.

Here are some other findings:

-- Teen data users (ages 13-17) were the most likely age segment to recall seeing mobile ads. Asian-Americans and African-Americans are more likely to recall mobile advertising at 42 percent and 40 percent respectively than all data users.

???26 percent of those who saw an ad responded at least once by sending an SMS text-message, the most popular ad response.

-- 9 percent said they have used click-to-call to respond to a mobile ad, where users follow a link on their phone to call a specific number.

-- 32 percent of data users said they are open to mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill; 13 percent said they are open to mobile advertising if it improves content; 14 percent said they are open to mobile advertising as long as it's relevant; and 23 percent expect to see more mobile advertising in the future.