• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 5, 2014

Smartphone users spent 89% of the time spend on media through a mobile app in Q4 2013, but women spent nearly an hour-and-a-half more -- 30 hours and 58 minutes -- compared with men at 29 hours and 32 minutes, per Nielsen research released Wednesday.

Companies continue to push consumers to mobile apps. It's easier to track behavior, serve ads, and retarget across platforms from mobile to desktop, but it's not always easy to sway consumers to give up the home page real estate. News organizations are notorious for directing readers to mobile apps through Twitter links, rather than them their mobile Web site. Yahoo this week began testing advertisements in apps to promote targeted messages that tie in with search.

The U.S. mobile ad market rose 122% in 2013 to $9.69 billion, according to eMarketer. It should grow another 83% in 2014 to $17.73 billion, when mobile advertising will account for 35.4% of digital ad spending in the U.S.

The divide between mobile app and Web site use for men and women continues to widen among tablet users. Women spent more than five additional hours using mobile apps on their tablets, compared with men in Q4 2013, and more than two hours more on the mobile Web.

Overall, the Q4 2013 Cross-Platform report found that the average American consumes nearly 60 hours of content weekly across different platforms like television, radio, online and mobile. Analyzing cross-device use, Nielsen's Q4 2013 Cross-Platform Report migrates the reporting of mobile use and mobile video use from survey-based insights to metered data through electronic mobile measurement. The average American adult logged an average of more than five hours per day watching live TV.

For online retail properties, the mobile app can serve as a hub on the home page of the mobile device -- a reminder of the company like a billboard or a street sign, but comScore thinks differently when it comes to traditional multichannel retailers.

In September 2013, comScore released stats on app vs. mobile Web use. Consumers use Apple's apps 99% of the time, compared with 1% on the Web. Amazon followed with 77% for mobile app vs. 23% for the mobile Web site; and eBay at 65% accesses the app vs. 35% on the Web site.

Most people will only download their favorite retail apps -- between one and three -- and then use their Web browser if they ever need to shop online somewhere else, per comScore.

When it comes to mobile, comScore believes multichannel retailers may be at a mindshare disadvantage when they are not front-and-center on the mobile device screen at the moment the consumer wants to shop on the mobile device. Those without a mobile app are forced to rely on mobile Web sites, which may not be optimized to the shopping and check-out experience.