Facebook, YouTube account for almost 40% of all mobile internet traffic

By Dave Smith

At Business Insider's IGNITION event last week, Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget detailed the future of the digital landscape, pointing out some important trends. For example, more than a quarter of all internet traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets - and two big internet properties are responsible for a huge amount of that traffic.

Based on data from a Sandvine report charted for us by BI Intelligence, Facebook and YouTube accounted for nearly 40% of all mobile web traffic in North America in September. Facebook accounted for 19% of that aggregate mobile traffic, YouTube was close behind with 18%, and the third largest share belonged to "general web traffic" through web browsers, at 11%. As BI Intelligence's Mark Hoelzel points out, ads make up a big percentage of Facebook's and YouTube's mobile traffic, since autoplay video ads increase the mobile data demands on those social networks.