Universal McCann and AOL released a joint study yesterday saying that one out of every seven minutes of media consumption per day happens on mobile devices in the U.S. This is yet another supporting point to mobile media’s increasing saturation in our lives.

The study surveyed 1,800 individuals, 95 percent of whom use mobile media to fill downtime, 82 percent while at work, 81 percent shopping, 80 percent at home and 65 percent while commuting.

In terms of mobile activities, 73 percent search for maps and directions, 55 percent do mobile social networking or looked for restaurant and movie listings/reviews (not sure why these were all lumped together), and 44 percent searched for news.

Ad effectiveness was also covered: About 30 percent said mobile ads had led them to share information, and 22 percent said mobile ads had influenced a purchase decision.

Indicating the multimedia orientation of mobile users, 77 percent said they consume TV and mobile at the same time. More importantly, 55 percent follow brands across multiple media sources: 56 percent have been driven to mobile from other media, while 42 percent have been driven from mobile to other media.

The study concludes that this “creates an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to transition with consumers as they move from activity to activity throughout the day.”

This was a big theme at the Winning Media Strategies conference in May. The message was that media companies can’t think of themselves in any one of the traditional silos (TV, radio, newspaper, etc.). The consumer entry point is diversifying and there is a need to be more “platform agnostic.”

In terms of advertising, there is also evidence that brand recall and other performance metrics are higher when branding is present across different media. The advantages of this continuity between traditional media and mobile device are further supported by this study.