• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, November 20, 2012

Just in time for the holiday shopping and eating-out season, mobile ad network Millennial Media focuses its monthly metrics report on the restaurant and retail segment. Retail has seen an 11% month-to-month increase in spend during the first half of 2012 across the Millennial network -- among the largest in the mobile ecosystem.

Across all business segments, it ranks third, right after Telecommunication and Finance, but ahead of entertainment and automotive for November.   

Within the retail and restaurant vertical, clothing stores represent the largest advertisers, with 30% of the spend compared to home products (21%) and quick-service food (11%). For this vertical, not surprisingly, mobile media is all about getting traffic, whether to physical stores (38% of campaign goals) or to online sites (17%). Only 16% of campaigns in this category are focused on brand awareness, and even less on the related product launch goal (11%).

All of the top post-click actions designed around these campaigns, store locators, m-commerce and mapping are also aimed primarily at pushing foot traffic or immediate sales. But nearly a third of all campaigns (30%) also involved a promotion of some kind, often a coupon.    

For the retail and restaurant segment, Millennial found that fashion-forward audiences were among the most responsive targets -- as were auto intenders and, of course, food aficionados and movie lovers. But women are especially good targets for this category, since they spend twice as much time as men on retail and restaurant mobile sites.  

Not surprisingly, this vertical is an early adopter of mobile local targeting, with 61% of campaigns using some form of geotargeting. Perhaps in order to capitalize on the impulse buy and hunger, the QSR sub-segment -- otherwise only a small share of the overall category -- comprised 39% of retail and restaurant advertisers who looked for local audiences in their campaigns. Retail comprised 22% of geo-local campaigns in the segment and restaurants, 21%.