Mobile Finance Users Skew Young, Value Brand Equity

Consumers who engage with finance content and ads on their mobile devices (?mobile finance users?) are disproportionately young and male, and place a high value on brands, finds Millennial Media [download page] in a May 2012 study conducted in partnership with comScore. While 25-34-year-olds make up only 17% of the mobile audience, they account for 32% of mobile finance users. Similarly, 18-24-year-olds, who make up 13% of the mobile audience, represent 21% share of those using mobile finance. Overall, mobile finance users are also more likely to be male (55%) than female (45%).

A March 2012 report from the Federal Reserve found a similar trend, showing that mobile banking skews young: those aged 18-29 made up 43.5% of users, relative to 22% of mobile phone users, while those 60 and older represented just 6% of mobile banking users, while holding 24% share of all mobile phone users.

Mobile Finance Users See Value in Brands

Data from ?Mobile Insights for Finance Brands? indicates that mobile finance users appear to place a higher value on brands than the general mobile audience. For example, they are 21% more likely to say they buy brands that reflect their style (51% vs. 42%), 37.5% more likely to say they will pay more for a company they trust (44% vs. 32%), and 27% more likely to say that brand names reflect quality (38% vs. 30%). Nevertheless, they are also 33% more likely to say they would change brands just for change (20% vs. 15%).

Advertisers Target Lead Gen

The report also looks at how finance advertisers compare to other advertisers on the Millennial Media platform when it comes to campaign goals, highlighting some interesting divergences. The top campaign goal for mobile finance advertisers in 2011 was lead generation and registrations, accounting for 70% of all campaigns. By comparison, lead gen/registrations was the campaign goal for just 25% of advertisers overall. Advertisers overall were much more focused on other goals such as sustained in-market presence (31% vs. 16% of finance advertisers) and brand awareness (12% vs. 4%). Given the importance that mobile finance users ascribe to brands, this suggests that finance advertisers should focus more on brand awareness goals.

Overall, 6 different sub-categories contributed to the overall finance mix on the Millennial Media platform in 2011, led by insurance (42%), banking (28%), and financial services (16%).

Other Findings:

• 4 in 5 mobile finance users own a smartphone, with Android (39%) and iOS (34%) the most popular platforms among those users.
• More than 1 in 3 mobile subscribers who access financial services via mobile also own a tablet or e-reader.
• 32% of mobile finance users earn at least $100k per year, compared to 27% of the total mobile audience.
• Mobile finance users are more likely than the total mobile audience to consider themselves to be environmentally friendly (49% vs. 35%), risk takers (48% vs. 33%), health conscious (47% vs. 33%), tech geeks (46% vs. 29%), and influential (45% vs. 33%).
• Mobile banking is the finance sub-category most frequently accessed by mobile finance users. Among those engaging with their bank accounts on a mobile device, 57% do so at least once a week.
• Mobile finance users are more likely to access finance content via a browser than an application.
• The most popular mobile content categories accessed by mobile finance users are weather (84%), maps (74%), search (69%), and news (67%).
• The top targeting methods used by finance advertisers in 2011 were content (34%), tactical (27%), local (24%), and demographic (13%).
• Compared to overall advertisers, finance advertisers focused much more heavily on place call (51% vs. 31%) and enroll/join/subscribe (54% vs. 36%) as post-click actions in their ads.

About the Data: The data is based on various comScore studies including: MobiLens survey (13+ years old, November 2011, n=40,000); Mobile Metrix (18+ years old, November 2011, n=4,500); Plan Metrix Mobile (18+ years old active mobile users overlaid with offline and psychographic information, November 2011, n=15,000); and ad Metrix Mobile (mobile display share of voice and ad creative analysis through November 2011). The 2011 Millennial Media data featured is based on actual campaign and platform data.

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