Almost one third (31%) of visits to youth and young-adult focused websites now come from tablets and mobiles.

Tablets accounted for almost one in every eight visits - a 320 percent increase in the number of visits on 2012. In comparison, tablets account for 8.7% of all UK web pages. Smartphones accounted for almost one in five visits - a 137 percent increase on 2012.

Of course, all publishers and advertisers need to stay relevant to their audiences but this is crucial to those targeting Generation Y. These statistics reinforce how important it is for those looking to reach youth and young-adults that their websites automatically display content in the most appropriate way for whichever device a consumer is using.

This is called Responsive Web Design (RWD) and the IAB’s recent Mobile Optimisation Study showed that only 11% of the UKs 100 biggest advertisers are using it. If you are targeting youth audiences, particularly around entertainment & lifestyle content, adoption levels simply can’t be that low, or all parties run the risk of becoming quickly out-of-date.

The prevalence of mobile devices is only going to increase. We predict the share of visits from tablets to youth/young-adult entertainment and lifestyle sites will hit 15 percent of by the end of 2013 and that the number of smartphone visits will grow a further 60 percent this year.

A key question is how dominant will Apple remain? The iPad accounts for 91 percent of tablet visits to these sites, followed by Samsung’s Galaxy Tab (2.9%), Amazon’s Kindle (2.8%) and Google’s Nexus (1.8%).
Apple accounted for 70 percent of smartphone visits in the first half of 2013, however, this was down six percentage points on 2012, all of which was ‘eaten up’ by Android (up six points to 25%).

Other devices, including Blackberry and Windows account for just 5 percent of smartphone visits to these type of sites.

So whilst it’s useful to understand the brand of device people are using, the key focus at this time should remain in producing or designing a site that looks as good on a mobile and tablet as it does on the PC. It may sound obvious but the IAB stats show this is isn’t translating into action.

 

By Dan McDevitt, joint Managing Director, w00t! Media.

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