• by David Kaplan , May 6, 2005

More than half of teens between the age of 13 and 17 own a cell phone, a study by WPP Group's MindShare notes, and therefore "mobile marketing" in some form must be part of any advertising campaign aimed at that demo.

The study, conducted by MORe--MindShare Online Research--examined the mobile 400 respondents between the ages of 13 and 17, and also suggests that teens with cell phones tend to be heavier users of media than other kids their age. While virtually all teens watch television, cell-phone users are significantly more likely than non-users to use the Internet every day, read newspapers, listen to radio, and read magazines.

This seemingly counterintuitive finding should inspire marketers to not simply concentrate their advertising efforts exclusively on mobile technologies, but rather to somehow tie a full set of media platforms together in order to be effective, said Marc Goldstein, MindShare's CEO.

The study found that cell phone use by teens jumped 43 percent in 2004 compared to 2003. Broken down by gender, teen girls, at 61 percent, are more likely to carry them than teen boys--with 46 percent of young males saying they take cell phones everywhere. And daily cell phone usage has more than doubled in the past year--again, with teen girls leading the way 41 percent to 27 percent.

Older teens are also much more likely to carry cell phones than younger ones. Seven out of ten kids ages 16 or 17 own cell phones, compared to one-half of kids ages 14 or 15, and one-fourth of all 13-year-olds. Teenagers who carry cell phones tend to use them heavily; 83 percent use their phones every day, and 64 percent use them several times a day or more. Just 5 percent use their mobile phones less than once a week. Only two out of ten teenage cell-phone users pay for their own phone service; the remainder have their monthly bills paid by their parents.

Teen cell-phone users are more likely than other teenagers to have media and technology items in their rooms, including TVs, computers, and video games.