Is 'The Fattest City in America' Also the Most Mobile Savvy?

Fri, 12/09/2011 - 07:51 by Greg Sterling

The IAB put out a list this week of the "Top Mobile Shopping Savvy U.S. Cities." Here is the list:

  1. Houston
  2. New York
  3. Atlanta
  4. Los Angeles
  5. Dallas/Ft. Worth
  6. Tampa/St. Petersburg
  7. Chicago
  8. Philadelphia
  9. Washington, D.C.
  10. Seattle/Tacoma
  11. San Francisco/Bay Area
  12. Boston
  13. Detroit
  14. Minneapolis/St. Paul
  15. Phoenix

In order to come up with its rankings the IAB considered four criteria:

Anticipating reactions such as, "How can Houston, the 'Fattest City in America in 2009,' also be the most mobile savvy, while San Francisco is #11?" the IAB said the following about Houston and San Francisco: 

Weighting and aggregating these data and indexing the results against the U.S. national average reveals that Houston was the most mobile-shopping-savvy city in the U.S. Houston scored high across all four metrics included in the IAB index (see Appendix), and in particular had the highest mobile device ownership level of any major U.S. city. However, high rates of mobile device ownership were not sufficient to make a city mobile shopping savvy. The San Francisco Bay Area had high mobile ownership but scored low on the savviness index, while Tampa-St. Pete went the other way.

The IAB said that the mobile devices measured where "primarily" smartphones and tablets. However I guarantee you that the penetration of smartphones in Houston is not greater than in San Francisco. Ownership of feature phones, still the majority (56%) in the US, should have been excluded.

In addition "propensity to be influenced by mobile coupons" is not an indication of savvy necessarily. More likely it's an indication of budget consciousness. And finally the presence of a retail app on one's smartphone or tablet is an indication of loyalty or brand affinity more than savvy. (I have zero retail apps on my smartphone and tablets, but over 140 apps overall). Indeed, overall number of apps or apps used on a regular basis is a greater indication of savvy than the presence of particular retail apps. 

Here are two alternative views of mobile "top cities" using other critera (Houston still ranks): 

Verve Wireless' Top DMAs for Mobile Ad Spending (on its network only): 

  1. St. Louis
  2. Houston
  3. New York 
  4. San Francisco Bay Area
  5. Portland 
  6. Denver
  7. Memphis
  8. Seattle 
  9. Dallas-Ft.Worth
  10. Cleveland

These data were captured in Q1 2011.

xAD's Top Cities for Local-Mobile Search:

  1. New York
  2. Los Angeles
  3. Chicago
  4. Miami 
  5. San Francisco
  6. Denver
  7. Dallas
  8. Houston 
  9. Atlanta
  10. Jacksonville

Here are the top US DMAs (2010) according to Nielsen:

  1. New York
  2. Los Angeles
  3. Chicago
  4. Philadelphia
  5. Dallas-Ft. Worth
  6. San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
  7. Boston (Manchester)
  8. Atlanta
  9. Washington, DC
  10. Houston 

Most of the lists one might generate around things like smartphone penetration/device ownership or mobile ad spending are going to correspond to population and media spending more generally.