• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 14, 2013

On the day’s first panel at the Mobile Insider Summit, executives from companies including AutoTrader, For Rent Media Solutions, and CareerBuilder spoke of how they’ve been surprised by the rapid level of mobile adoption last year. Melanie Allgood, sr. manager, at AutoTrader explained how mobile has become an integral part of the car shopping process and how the company has to do more to make the experience of shifting between desktop and mobile use more seamless for customers.

Likewise, Michelle Castillo, sr. online media manager, at For Rent, said the company ha seen smartphone use rise in particular in apartment searches. With both smartphones and tablets, For Rent is gaining more insight into what doing after work to find apartments, with activity much further up the search funnel on mobile. For CareerBuilder, 30% of its traffic is now for mobile, and 60% of email opens are in mobile, leading the company to tailor its services more for smartphones.