• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, August 12, 2009

With advertisers showing increasing interest in both local markets and the growing number of individuals who only own cell phones, Scarborough Research is adding cell phone-only users to its local market studies.

Fieldwork is set to begin this summer, and the first data incorporating cell phone-only users is scheduled to be released this coming spring.

Scarborough will use address sampling to identify cell phone-only users, then roll out the new cell phone-only sampling as part of its local surveys in 10 markets over the next year, followed by all the top-tier markets by spring 2011. The first wave includes Austin; Columbus; Denver; Flint, Mich.; Norfolk, Va.; Oklahoma City; Pittsburgh; Portland; Sacramento; and Syracuse.

Arbitron, which owns Scarborough, has also pushed to incorporate more cell phone-only data into its radio ratings for 151 markets using paper diaries.

Arbitron and Nielsen, its new competitor in the radio ratings business, both tout the high representation of cell phone-only households in their samples. Cell phone-only households are considered desirable sample additions by researchers because they tend to skew younger, making them of special interest to marketers.