Last month, Telmetrics and xAd released a Nielsen-administered study that covered a wide range of mobile local usage data (see our interview with Telmetrics’ Bill Dinan). As advertised, today they follow that up with the first of three category-level breakdowns — a focus on travel.

Overall, 88 percent of smartphone users access travel content and spend 93 minutes per month on travel apps and mobile sites, according to the study. Behavior patterns broke down into four distinct user profiles that the report calls out. Other highlights include:

— Smartphones over-index tablets in activities related to finding and contacting businesses. On the flip side, tablets over index smartphones in more research-related activities like price comparisons, looking up reviews, etc.

— Only 25 percent of both smartphone and tablet users have narrowed down their activities to a specific brand/purchase, so the content that users view on their mobile device can impact their future purchase decisions.

–The majority of mobile travel users notice mobile ads with nearly 1 out of 3 clicking on the ad for more information – 75 percent noticed ads via smartphone and 63 percent noticed ads via tablet.

— Mobile travel users are most likely to click on locally relevant ads or ads that offer a coupon/promotion.

— 57 percent of smartphone and 52 percent of tablet users clicked on a mobile ad because it was targeted to their needs or recent search behavior.

Focusing on a few of these points, it’s clear that some themes carried over from the first release.  These include the logical contention that mobile ads are not only successful in converting users, but that it can happen within a period of latency that is shorter than other media.

“Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed say they ultimately made a purchase,” said Dinan. “More than 70 percent of those say it was within a month of the initial search.” He added that 44 percent of these users are 18-34, and 34 percent make $50k-$100K salaries.

As was communicated in the first data release, mobile behavior is also showing evidence of happening in more of a “discovery” mode, than the search paradigm that ruled the desktop.

“With only 25% having decided on a brand before the search and more than 50% saying they click on ads that are targeted to their needs or recent search behavior, local relevant content can have a real impact on the conversion rate,” said Dinan.

Much more can be seen at a glance in the infograph below and the full white paper can be downloaded here.