Forty-two percent of users click on mobile ads they like, found the . Of those, 49 percent go on to make a purchase, while 35 percent visit the advertiser's site, and 27 percent call the business in question.

Third-party market researcher Ipsos OTX questioned 5013 adult smartphone Internet users at the end of 2010.

The results also claim that 82 percent of smartphone users "notice mobile ads," but that's a rather muddy phrase; being aware of ads on a page is not a guarantee of reading them, for example.

The survey emphasizes the practical nature of searching on a smartphone compared with on a desktop. Nine out of 10 users have taken action based on the results of a smartphone search. Smartphone Web searches are weighted towards the user's locality: 95 percent of people look for local information on a smartphone. Perhaps the isn't just a passing trend.

We're also using our phones while we're shopping in the real world. Forty-nine percent of us compare prices while browsing, 44 percent read reviews of stuff we see, and 34 percent are even using their phones to check the store's inventory while we're visiting it.