March Madness is the craze that happens from the second week of March until the first week of April every year.  This revolves around the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments, which determines the national champions in college basketball.  And as we’ve tackled in the past, if there’s a major event happening, you can expect that there’s an increase in the use of mobile devices,  and you can count on the fact that there will be apps and ads abounding.

According to Millennial Media’s SMART Mobile Madness infographic (see below), among passionate fans of the NCAA Tournament – 88% used their mobile devices for March Madness-related activity and 40% purchased an app related to the tournament.

On the first day of the NCAA Tournament, impressions on sports apps increased 31% week-over-week and from 5-7pm ET, impressions on sports apps increased 158%.  Sports related apps weren’t the only ones that experienced an increase in usage, social media app impression increased 42% week-over-week during prime time games on the first day of the NCAA Tournament (7 pm-11 pm).

The report also noted that 26% of consumers used their smartphone as their primary device for following the NCAA tournament as compared to the 17 percent that claimed the PC as their primary device.  The report showed that mobile devices were used by 48% to check scores; 25% to read about teams/players; 23% to check brackets; and 20% to watch game highlights.

“From checking scores and watching highlights to interacting with friends, family and alumni, 88% of passionate fans turned to their mobile devices as a way of engaging with NCAA Tournament-related content. We anticipate seeing similar consumer behavior trends during other multi-day sporting events like the upcoming UEFA Euros [the European football championship, to be hosted in Eastern Europe June 8 to July 1] and the 2012 Summer Olympics,” Millennial concluded.

Millennial’s report was the result of a team-up with Interactive Advertising Bureau on a survey by Harris Interactive of how 2,000 U.S. adults used their phones or mobile devices to engage with the March Madness.  The survey was conducted from March 23 through 27, 2012.

Though Millennial’s report makes it seem that more people participated in March Madness, Turner Sports reported that traffic to NCAA.com and March Madness Live broadband and mobile services dropped 6% from last year’s basketball tourney, to 51.6 million visits, from March 11 to the April 2 title game.  They reported an average of 1.1 million daily unique visitors (down 10%) and an average of  473,000 daily uniques on mobile (down 1%).

source: Mobile Marketing Trends from the Millennial Media April 2012 S.M.A.R.T.™ Report