RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's millennial mobile users spend up to four hours a day on their phones and are increasingly likely to engage with online ads, new research has shown.

According to the MMA Mobile Report Brazil 2016, based on a survey by Millward Brown Brazil of 1,200 men and women aged between 14 and 55 who have a mobile phone or tablet with internet access, the proportion of users who said they avoided clicking on ads was 32%, down from 41% a year ago.

And more millennials – the age group spending the greatest amount of time on their phones – were paying attention to some extent to the advertising they saw while online.

In 2015, almost one third (30%) of this demographic said they never paid attention to such content, but that was down to 22% in 2016.

The proportion of this generation that always pays attention to advertising on the internet was up from 9% to 13%, while that for those "sometimes" paying attention from 62% to 65%.

And the platform on which they were most likely to notice advertising was YouTube, which has now overtaken Facebook in terms of ad visibility.

In terms of location, most users preferred to see advertising while at home; the second best option for millennials was in a public establishment, but older Gen X consumers liked to see ads when travelling.

Making calls (89%) remains the most popular single activity carried out on mobile phones by Brazilian users, but online activities of various sorts – browsing the internet (87%), accessing e-mails (85%), consulting search engines (71%) – were also prominent.

And the use of apps has become increasingly common, with an average of eight now being used in the course of a week, up from six in 2015.

Data from Warc's Adspend Database show that approximately BRL1.2bn was spent to secure mobile ad space in Brazil last year, a 68.2% rise from the previous year and approximately 13% of total internet adspend.

Data sourced from ProNews; additional content by Warc staff