Mobile banking surpasses online banking in popularity.

• Author: Jensen, Amanda
• Position: SOCIAL & DIGITAL MEDIA

SPREAD THE WORD. IT'S OFFICIAL: Last year, mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic. It's no longer a matter of if or when mobile marketing becomes crucial for financial institutions, that time is now.

In order to know where to begin implementing mobile marketing initiatives, it's important to fully understand what this means. Below are four key statistics from comScore to keep in mind while crafting your mobile marketing plan of attack.

1. Sixty percent of time spent consuming digital media is now on a mobile device, which includes both smartphones and tablets. Reports show that the switch took place during 2014, and the gap is projected to grow with mobile use topping 1.8 billion in 2015. Desktop traffic is estimated to fall short of that by almost 100 million users.

2. Of that mobile time, the majority is spent in apps rather than on mobile sites, with app usage at 88 percent for smartphones and 82 percent for tablets. With such a large portion of digital media consumption taking place in apps, it's impossible to ignore their importance when it comes to advertising. No matter what audience you're trying to reach, there's an app, or a category of apps, for that. Among the top categories are search/navigation, social networking, entertainment, service (i.e. banking and bill pay), news, weather and even games. Candy Crush Saga, Words With Friends and Solitaire are among the top 10 apps for those age 35 or older.

3. Forty-eight percent of mobile research begins in a search engine and 33 percent begins on branded websites. Despite the fact that mobile apps are dominating much of users' time, mobile Web should not be ignored. The focus for financial institutions when advertising on mobile Web will be different than for apps. One important component will be text ads, which appear in prime locations on search engine results pages. Having a website that is responsive--that is, mobile optimized--is also critical to driving traffic, as Google will give preference in search results to these pages. Ensuring that your location details are readily available is another...