• by Mahi de Silva , Op-Ed Contributor, October 2, 2013

In the same way that Tuesday's lunch isn't the same as Wednesday's -- and weekday morning talk shows differ from Sunday night football -- Americans' consumption of mobile content can vary significantly depending on the time of day and the day of the week.

In a study by Opera Software, the parent company of mobile ad subsidiary Opera Mediaworks, clear patterns emerged when looking at traffic to mobile Web sites over a 24-hour period, and also over the course of a week.

Many of the findings are intuitive: traffic to sites in the food & drink category, for instance, is highest on Thursdays and over the weekends, as Americans research recipes and restaurants to enjoy in their free time. However, engagement (measured by page views) is highest early on in the week, perhaps triggered by grocery shoppers.

But some patterns are not obvious, deduced by plain common sense. Advertisers that are focused on consumers in these verticals should consider these as they optimize their mobile campaigns via dayparting or week-parting.

‘Hump day’ is the biggest day in sports.

You would think that the weekend would see the largest volume of sports users, right? Fans flock to the mobile Web to check sports scores, read game analysis and work on their fantasy teams.

Wrong. While Sunday is quite high for engagement (17.3% of weekly page views vs. 9.82% at its Monday low), Wednesdays are the peak for sports content in traffic.

Why hump day? Most of the activity in sports takes place in the morning (6-10 a.m.) or afternoon (2-6 p.m.), which means professionals are using their workday hours, not lunch or evening leisure time, to check in on their favorite teams.

Purchase-driven behavior takes place midweek, in the mornings.

Wednesdays might be a peak time for sports, but the midweek period (Tues.-Thurs.) is also when U.S. consumers are on their mobile devices to research, plan and shop.

Traffic to mobile Web sites in the automotive, travel, health & fitness, personal finance, shopping and real estate categories increases noticeably during this time, as Americans buckle down and get serious about where they want to go and what they want to buy.

This “lean forward” kind of behavior is also notably dense in the mornings (6-10 a.m.). Afternoons and weekends are spent more on “lean back” activities like checking business and news sites and browsing fashion, education, and arts & entertainment content. Weekends are also a peak time for games, hobbies, and religion & spirituality.

Americans are up late thinking about finances and their next career move.

Imagine this: you wake up at 3 a.m., and after tossing and turning for some time, give up on falling back asleep and give in to the glowing mobile device on your nightstand. What do you do with it?

As it turns out, many people's thoughts turn to the future and how to improve their life position. By far the most popular categories visited in both the 10 p.m.-2.a.m. and 2-6 a.m. time periods are career and personal finance.

It's worth noting that travel is also a popular category in the late evening -- perhaps driven by dream vacation planning -- and traffic to home & garden sites lifts around dawn, as mobile users explore new concepts and plan their perfect home environment.

So don't waste valuable mobile media dollars running your campaign 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, solely to identify the time pockets with the highest CTR or conversions. Use this research to start off with some logical dayparting or week-parting, based on usage patterns in your target verticals.

Data for this study was obtained from usage patterns of Opera Mini, a popular mobile browser for mobile devices, including feature phones and smartphones. The information was collected during the month of August from U.S.-based devices only. Day-of-week findings are backed up by a sampling of data from AdMarvel, the mobile ad server and ad exchange of Opera Mediaworks serving 60 billion impressions a month.