Get ready for the holiday shopping season, with mobile becoming an area of particular interest.  Millennial Media’s August S.M.A.R.T. Report, released today, looks at the month’s trends in order to offer some insight to the upcoming retail goldmine.  A study in targeting behavior and areas of growth, August’s report shows affluent mobile users as key demographics for rich-media ads this fall and winter.

Millennial Media teamed up with comScore for the special section on holiday shopping, looking at mobile retail advertising, usage and growth over the past year.  Between the two firms, this S.M.A.R.T. report was able to note purchasing habits, indicating that advertisers begin to plan their methods of attack early this year, even in the mobile sector.

Thirty percent of mobile subscribers accessing retail content on their phones can’t be reached online or offline, indicating that mobile is a huge opportunity for highly targeted advertising during holiday shopping.  This is a new audience to which advertisers can appeal, offering direct value to consumers, and gaining a great deal of market research and potential brand loyalty in return.

The report also found that mobile retail users tend to be slightly more affluent than the total mobile audience, with 34% making over $100k annually.  This means luxury retail brands really need to look towards mobile targeted ad campaigns in order to make the most of this holiday shopping season.  Some retail categories of interest are electronics and clothing/accessories, though the products and services mobile retail users purchase still vary a great deal.

The drill down into targeting methods is something Millennial Media has really gotten into over the past couple of months, with even more insight offered in August’s report (see here for last month’s look at mobile male shoppers).  For retail in particular, promotion as a post-click campaign destination saw an increase of 3% month-over-month.

Travel’s hotel vertical saw the most activity on this front, which could also coincide with end-of-summer deal offerings.  Additionally Place Call was another tactic that saw success in August, used in recruiting for government agencies and advocacy groups.  This is good news for non-profits in particular, as they seek to expand on social media marketing for more direct calls to action.