Advertising and mobile analytics company, Flurry, has released some new stats on the reach that mobile apps seem to be enjoying. The take-away here is that the number of people using mobile apps in any given day, at least the apps that Flurry tracks, seems to be growing into a sizable group of people, albeit a bit fragmented across platforms and devices.

Flurry estimates that there were 224 million active mobile users in apps tracked this past February across iOS and Android, which is a bit more than the number of active users (221 million) during the same month on laptop or desktop computers, as measured by comScore, a similar company that tracks computer user data.

Flurry’s data also suggests that there is a prime time of app use in the evening hours on all days of the week with an active audience of approximately 52 million users during these golden hours. This compares nicely with the number of folks receiving the top 200 newspapers on the weekend in the US, or the number of people tracked watching the top three US primetime TV shows during primetime.

The implications of this are fairly clear: people are using apps with advertising in them in the same numbers, in generally the same hourly times as other traditional media like newspapers, computers, and television. That says that advertisers should be looking as closely at Android and iOS mobile apps as similar in scope and power as the traditional media buys, even if the audience is fragmented across devices and systems.

Think of it this way, if a savvy advertiser figures out how to hit the 52 million individuals using their mobile phone or tablet during prime time hours, they’ve just reached an audience similar in size to that of a traditional TV media buy. While the television advertising may only need to show up on three television shows, it’s doubtful that all the app users are watching the same TV shows during their app use, thereby offering advertisers yet another stream of eyeballs for their wares.

The days of “maybe we should look at mobile apps for our ads” are over. If advertisers want to reach large, growing numbers of affluent, interested individuals–and there’s no sign that this trend is slowing down–mobile apps on both iOS and Android are the place to be.

• SourceFlurry
• ViaThe Appside