More than half (56 percent) of Americans are connected to the Internet by some wireless means, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. While this wireless access primarily is on a Wi-Fi network with a laptop (39 percent), about a third of Americans used a cellphone to IM, e-mail or search. Cellphone use to access the Internet increased to 32 percent in April 2009 from 24 percent in December 2007, according to the survey of 2,253 Americans.
Nearly half of all African-Americans and English speaking Hispanics used cellphones or other handheld devices to access the Internet, compared with the 28 percent of white Americans who do so. Adoption of mobile access to the Web by African-Americans on an average day is fast growing; from 12 percent in December 2007 to 29 percent by April 2009. By comparison, only 19 percent of all Americans access the Internet on a mobile device in a typical day.
John Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project, told The New York Times that he believes the “cost of broadband and personal computers drives some users to adopt mobile Internet instead of the traditional wire-line.”
We recommend, based on the high usage rate and fast growing penetration of mobile Internet among African-Americans and Hispanics, that local advertisers seeking to reach these demographic groups should appropriately weight their media planning and spending allocations. This is one of the reasons why we see mobile ad spending increasing from $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion by 2013.
Rick Ducey is the managing director for BIA/Kelsey. He is an expert in digital media innovations, competitive strategies, new product development and new business models, including digital ecosystem collaboration strategies.
Ducey oversees the firm's consulting, research and advisory services areas. He is also the program director for BIA/Kelsey's Video Local Media advisory service. This program provides coverage and analysis of how online, mobile and broadcast video technologies, competition, shifting consumer demographics and media usage trends are driving changes in the media ecosystem and SMBs and other advertisers can be successful in the new environment. Ducey assists clients with their business planning and revenue models, strategic research, market assessment, and designing and implementing digital strategies. He is also a cofounder of SpectraRep, one of BIA�s companies, which sells a patent-pending IP-based alerting system that he co-invented.
Prior to joining BIA in 2000, Ducey was senior vice president of NAB's Research and Information Group. In this position, he was in charge of the association�s new technology assessment, audience and policy research, strategic planning and information systems, including all Internet operations, and he also developed publications and seminars.
Before joining NAB in 1983, Ducey was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University where he taught and did research in the areas of emerging telecommunication technologies and strategic market research. He also served on the graduate management faculties of George Mason University and George Washington University in telecommunications management and the University of Maryland, where he taught strategic market management and research methodologies. Ducey was selected as the Spring 2011 Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University where he teaches entrepreneurship in new media. He has published a number of research articles and papers in these areas and serves on editorial boards of leading scholarly journals in the communications field. He has also worked at radio stations WSOQ-AM/WEZG-FM and Upstate Cablevision in North Syracuse, New York.
Ducey received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, M.S. from Syracuse University and B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
