Mobile Users Like ESPN, Weather

Mobile users have a much greater propensity to access sports and weather websites like ESPN and AccuWeather than PC users, however, the results for search giants Google and Yahoo are exactly the opposite. The news is part of comScore and Telephia’s new “Mobile Web Metrix” which compares mobile and personal computer usage.

by Kristina Knight

“The first results from MobileWeb Metrix highlight the value of evaluating a Web property’s performance among both the mobile and the PC audiences,” said Kanishka Agarwal, VP of New Products, Telephia in a prepared statement.

According to the results, The Weather Channel and ESPN have the highest mobile reach with 22.1% and 17.9% respectively.

"Sports is an especially powerful category in mobile, along with weather and news, because they really lend themselves to getting quick snippets of information," said Agarwal (via MediaPost).

Yahoo Weather and AccuWeather each also had a mobile reach that outpaced PC reach. All of the sites saw mobile-to-PC index scores over 120 which indicates a far stronger mobile than PC showing.

Search platforms, on the other hand, showed the opposite. Both Google (13.0%) and Yahoo (11.1%) search platforms scored well under 120, which indicates a much stronger following via traditional computers than mobile devices.

Email platforms also seem to be more popular among traditional PC users. Of the leading email applications, Gmail was the only email provider that showed a higher mobile index rate (6.7% mobile vs. 5.6% PC) . Yahoo (29.4% mobile), HotMail (15.3% mobile) and AOL (13.7% mobile) were all under the 120 index score mark.