India is the second largest mobile market in the world after China, with nearly 10 to 12 million mobile subscribers added monthly in the country. A survey by InMobi has found that engagement stats for mobile ads in the youth market are very high.

Survey results also showed that the college-aged consumers are equally interested in almost all genres of mobile advertising, as long as the advertisements have something significant to offer and do not interfere with the mobile browsing experience. Among ads, those most welcomed are fast free coupons, free mobile games with embedded unobtrusive ads, money transfer services, free humorous clips and Bluetooth-based ‘alerts’ for items on sale nearby.

Mobile is clearly becoming a mass medium in India – having extended out from only the most affluent individuals in the very largest metropolitan areas. The country’s largest cities have the highest mobile Internet usage; however, many small to midsized towns such as Meerut, Aligarh, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Kota, Hassan and Trivandrum generated almost a fourth of the mobile browsing traffic.

In addition, Airtel is the clear leader in terms of the percentage of respondents browsing the Internet on their mobile phones. Reliance is the only service provider where less than 50 per cent of the respondents browse the internet, most likely because Reliance phones are not used frequently for value-added services.

According to the survey, which included 205 college-aged consumers:

— 57% of respondents browse the internet on their mobile phones

— close to one-third of respondents who surf the Internet through their mobile phones engage with brands that advertise

— of those who engaged with ads, 72.5% were most likely to visit the ad’s website

— of those who engaged with ads, 10% woud call the company and 17.5% would buy the product