Study: Mobile media more popular with Democrats

Perhaps not surprising given Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama's embrace of mobile marketing--last month, Obama texted 2.9 million supporters with news that he selected Joe Biden as his running mate--media research firm Nielsen Mobile reports that as of Q2 2008, mobile media enjoyed greater popularity with Democrats than Republicans. According to Nielsen Mobile, 62 percent of Democrats use one or more data services on their mobile handsets, compared to 55 percent of Republicans--Democrats are more likely to use text messaging (53 percent compared to 46 percent of Republicans), picture messaging and MMS (27 percent compared to 21 percent) and the mobile web (17 percent compared to 13 percent).

Nielsen adds that mobile web traffic to news sites is surging as the election draws closer. CNN News generated 4.8 million unique users and CNN Politics attracted 1.2 million unique visitors in July 2008--a year ago, only 364,000 unique visitors arrived at CNN Politics. Yahoo News followed at 2.9 million users, trailed by ABC News (2.3 million), Fox News (2.27 million) and MSNBC News (2.24 million). In addition, Nielsen notes news channels consistently rank among the most-viewed mobile video efforts--the firm's most recent Mobile Video Report estimated 680,000 mobile video users are interested in viewing more political and government coverage on their phones.

For more on the Nielsen report:
- read this release

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