• by Mark Walsh , April 16, 2008

M:Metrics suggests in a new report that marketers go mobile to reach the elusive young male consumer.

With 36% of men ages 18 to 34 in Western Europe using mobile media, and 48% in the U.S. as of February, that demographic is an especially attractive audience for mobile advertisers, according to market researcher M:Metrics.

Furthermore, men in that age group are highly receptive to SMS text messages, with 9% responding to a text ad compared to only 4% of mobile users on average.

"Reaching the 18- to-34-year-old age demographic is a real challenge to advertisers, as this group is spending less time consuming print and broadcast media," said Paul Goode, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, in a statement.

That age group, for instance, makes up 56% of the mobile media audience compared to only 34% of TV viewers in Great Britain.

The M:Metrics study found that the mobile media audience overall was proportionally larger in the U.S. (27.3%) than in Europe. Among European countries, the United Kingdom was highest at 26.8%, followed by Spain and Italy, both at about 23.5%, and Germany and France, both at about 18%.

Surprisingly, however, the U.S. mobile messaging audience--defined as subscribers who send one or more text messages during the month--was only about 49% compared to between 76% and 87% in Europe.

While U.S. mobile customers are more likely to have mobile data plans and be active media consumers, they use text-messaging less than Europeans to get news and information.

A recent study by the Pew Internet Project found that 60% of Americans under 30 use their cell phones to send or receive text messages on a typical day.

Among the top activities for U.S. mobile subscribers in February were sending or receiving photos or videos (22.2%), playing downloaded games (21.4%), and receiving SMS text ads (19.1%), according to M:Metrics. The proportion of users receiving text ads in European countries was far higher, ranging from about 30% in Germany to 63.7% in France.

Mobile ad spending in the U.S. is expected to hit $6.5 billion in the U.S., and $5.5 billion in Europe by 2012, according to eMarketer.