ComScore, a leader in assessing the digital world, today released the results of the first study of its cross-media team of PC and mobile Internet users in United States, discovering that light PC Internet users are 30% more likely than heavy PC Internet users to make use of their mobile devices to access Internet content.

Overall 42 million people used their mobile devices during October 2008 to access news as well as information content on the Internet, a growth of 57% from October 2007.

The study discovered that 15.2% of light PC Internet users’ accessed news and information on their mobile device at least once per week, as against a lower 11.7% of heavy PC Internet users.

For the purposes of this study, comScore classified “heavy” PC Internet users as those who watched, on average, 6,701 pages during one month, and “light” users as those who watched, on average, 1,104 pages per month.  

Around 20% of PC Internet users in the cross-media group were classified as heavy users, and accounted for 43% of overall page views, whereas 50% were light users and accounted for 18% of page views. The remaining was classed as medium users.

Brandon Starkoff, VP/Mobile Activation Director at media agency Starcom USA – which helps some of the country’s most prominent marketers place the right ad messages in front of the right audiences, said, “The findings affirm that mobile Internet users comprise a substantial segment of the population, and suggest that a significant portion of these people are using mobile to supplement their at-home online media diet.”

“Understanding these emerging mobile behavior patterns is valuable to marketers looking for opportunities to increase scale and deliver valuable consumer experiences,” Starkoff added.

The study also discovered that mobile Internet users are more likely to be male (58%) and to be 18 to 44 years of age.

Possibly reflecting this demographic skew, heavy mobile Internet users illustrate a high engagement with Web sites, which offer information that is appealing to people with more active lifestyles including regional / local content; entertainment and sports information.

On the other hand, light mobile Internet users are heavier users of computer to access Internet content and are heavily engaged with the following types of Internet content such as education, conversational media, travel, business, finance and retail.

The study was carried using a sample of individuals who were members of comScore’s PC panel of online users and who were also participants in comScore’s monthly mobile survey.  The findings above represent digital media usage for the three-month average ending October 2008.