Thursday 28 March 2013

Samsung holds more mobile patents than any other company

"Samsung lost out big to Apple last year in a mobile patent blowout in the U.S., but it’s been slowly building up an arsenal of patents that potentially will keep it from falling into the same situation again. Samsung, also currently the world’s biggest mobile company, received the most mobile patents in 2012, and it now holds the most mobile patents of any company worldwide, according to the latest patent report out from mobile analyst Chetan Sharma, which lays out a thicket of companies scrambling to put a legal seal on their intellectual property in the fast-moving world of wireless communications.
For his study, Sharma looked at more than 7 million mobile patents awarded in the U.S. and Europe, the two biggest markets for patents globally at the moment. He found that the U.S. has stolen a march over its old world counterpart since 1996. The U.S. accounts for nearly three-quarters (72%) of all mobile patents across the two regions."

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Tumblr hosts 100 million blogs

"Tumblr has today quietly ticked over the 100 million blog mark, with those blogs containing some 44.6 billion posts. We noticed that the ticker on the popular blogging platform’s about page had ticked over and Tumblr confirmed with us that this milestone was reached today.
This marks significant growth over the last year, of somewhere around 50 million blogs since April of 2012, when it crossed 50 million for the first time. The last reported number of blogs was 93 million as of March 2, 2013, so the pace is still accelerating, with 6 million being created in the last month or so alone."

83% of tablet owners use the tablet alongside TV

"The BBC [survey] found the following:
– Some 43% of tablet owners say that they watch more TV now than they did five years ago. 83% say they use tablets alongside TV.
– 25-34 year-old professionals are the biggest “news enthusiasts.” But that enthusiasm is still TV-first, other screens second, with tablets remaining distinctly in a secondary, not primary, role. Across all age groups, 42% of news consumption is still happening on TV, with laptops (29%), smartphones (18%) and tablets (10%) scoring in significance.
– Advertising may be appearing in different formats, but users are not surprised by that. The BBC found that “news audiences expect to see advertising nearly as much on mobile.” The exact figures: 79% tablet and 84% smartphone were unsurprised with ads compared to 87% on TV and 84% online. But response times on mobile are still less good. 1 in 7 users said they responded to a mobile ad in the last four weeks with responses to TV and desktop are 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 respectively.
– TV remains first screen. “In breaking news situations, users turn to television as their primary and first device (42%), with the majority (66%) then turning to the internet to investigate stories further. Users rated national and international news of most importance (84%, 82%), closely followed by local news (79%). Financial and business news (61%) were more highly valued than news about sports (56%) and arts/entertainment news (43%).”
Methodology:
"The survey, The BBC says, polled some 3,600 consumers across Australia, Singapore, India, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Poland, Germany, France and the U.S., the BBC, working with InSites Consulting, says this is the biggest study of its kind. The geographical reach complements the ongoing work from Pew Research Center on digital media usage, which focuses on the U.S. only."

26% of Americans own a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet



"Twenty-six percent of consumers are digital omnivores (own a laptop, smartphone and  tablet).
Tablet ownership increased 177 percent over the past year, with almost a third of tablet owners viewing it as one of their top three most preferred consumer electronic devices.
Tablet owners stream movies 70 percent more often than non-tablet owners.
More than 80 percent of consumers are multi-tasking while watching TV.
The survey reveals that 93 percent of Americans place Internet access as the most valued household subscription.
More than half of all consumers are willing to pay a premium for faster Internet connection with tablet and smartphone owners more inclined to pay for faster connections."
Note - More info in the press release here

Europe - Key digital insights

"Key takeaways from the 2013 Europe Digital Future in Focus (#FutureinFocus) report include:
- 408.3 million people in Europe used the desktop-based internet in December 2012, a 7 percent increase over the past year.Turkey has the youngest European internet audience with nearly 70 percent under the age of 35. Source: comScore MMX
- Russia widens the gap to Germany as Europe’s country with the largest online audience (61.3 million), while Italy’s internet audience grew the fastest over the past year (up 17 percent). Source: comScore MMX
- 57 percent of EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) mobile users owned a smartphone in the 3 month average ending December 2012. Spain’s mobile audience showed the highest adoption of smartphones with 66 percent. Source: comScore MobiLens
- In the EU5 region, Samsung leads the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) market with a 32 percent share, whilst Google is the operating system of choice for 50 percent of EU5 smartphone users. Apple was the smartphone manufacturer with the 2nd largest user base and also ranked as the 2nd most popular smartphone operating system (OS). Source: comScore MobiLens
- EU5 online video audience grew 5 percent over the past year, whilst the number of mobile video viewers jumped by 162 percent since December 2011. Leading online video platforms across Europe are YouTube (Google), Dailymotion, Facebook and VEVO. Source: comScore Video Metrix
- Yandex Web Search captured a 10 percent share of the European search market in December 2012. Source: comScore qSearch
- Time spent on news/information sites increased by 10 percent amongst European internet users. - - The most visited news/information resource was Yahoo!-ABC News Network (34.6 million), followed by the BBC (27.4 million). HPMG News, which includes sites such as Huffington Post and TechCrunch, ranked as the 3rd largest news/information site and saw the strongest audience growth amongst the top 10 over the past year (up 60 percent). Source: comScore MMX
- 19.2 million EU5 smartphone users purchased a product or service via their device in the 3 month average ending December 2012 (14.1 percent of EU5 smartphone owners). Source: comScore MobiLens."
Source:  Press release from comScore, 21st March 2013

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Twitter drives ratings for British digital TV channel UKTV

"Twitter has driven UKTV's ratings, according to Darren Childs, the broadcaster's chief executive, speaking as part of a panel that discussed the complementary relationship between on demand and broadcast.
At the Guardian Changing Media Summit on Friday, Childs said online conversations have increased UKTV’s viewers and the broadcaster’s on-demand engagement model was exemplified by the rise of Dynamo.
Dynamo is a magician whose online discovery by UKTV led to a popular broadcast series on pay channel Watch.
Childs said: "What was interesting when we broadcast the first couple of episodes of Dynamo was watching how Twitter was driving our ratings. Online conversation about this great new piece of television was actually increasing our viewership. The two are very complementary."
Childs admitted UKTV had been "behind" on digital content when he joined the company in 2010: "Whilst I wish we were doing this four or five years ago, I’m quite happy where we are in terms of catching up.
"We’re turned our disadvantage into an advantage – a lot of people have lost a lot of money doing things that we’ve been able to learn from, so we can focus on the areas that are commercial successful.""
Source:  Marketing Magazine, 25th March 2013

Contactless payments account for 20% of transactions at Pret A Manger in the UK

"Contactless payments at sandwich chain Pret A Manger have boomed over the past 12 months, according to the firm's director of IT, delivery and support, Andy Chalklin.
"Contactless payments in terms of our overall transactions have gone from single digits of probably between three to five per cent, to about 20 per cent in the last 12 months," Chalklin told Computing in an exclusive interview.
He said that although the firm moved into the contactless area early on, it is only recently that it has seen a huge surge in users adopting and using the technology.
[...]
He added that the sandwich chain is gaining sales from the use of contactless technology now, and is adamant that the firm will do everything in its power to ensure it is ready for the rollout of other mobile payment solutions.
"I think to be known as a place that accepts contactless cards has raised sales. What I don't want is to fall back; we need to always make sure our devices are the fastest available," he said."
Note - these are payments through NFC chips in cards, not mobile phones

Monday 25 March 2013

HMV had 22% of the UK physical music & DVD market in 2012

"According to Verdict, HMV’s share of the combined music and DVD market, defined as physical and downloaded products bought on and offline, was 22.3 per cent last year. Amazon came in second position with a share of 17 per cent.
Kantar Worldpanel, a consumer research group, has estimated that if HMV disappeared from the high street entertainment retail sales of £300m would be lost – over 9 per cent of the total entertainment market – as a result of fewer sales from browsing and buying on impulse."

Starbucks generates 3 million mobile transactions a week in the US

"Starbucks is seeing big results via mobile, with the beverage giant generating more than three million United States mobile payment transactions per week.
In addition, Starbucks is rolling out a cross-channel, multi-brand loyalty brand, as well as global social impact initiatives. The comments were made by Howard Schultz, president/CEO of Starbucks, during the company’s annual meeting of shareholders."
Note - this is 3m payments, not $3m in payments!

Friday 22 March 2013

Twitter is one of three statistically significant variables that correlate with TV ratings

"U.S. TV viewers are taking to Twitter to talk about TV, and the digital chatter is building steam. According to SocialGuide, 32 million unique people in the U.S. Tweeted about TV in 2012. That’s quite the confab, but what does it all really mean for the TV industry? Should networks and advertisers be paying attention? Early research on the subject from Nielsen and SocialGuide says yes.
By analyzing Tweets about live TV, the study confirmed a relationship between Twitter and TV ratings. It also identified Twitter as one of three statistically significant variables (in addition to prior-year rating and advertising spend) to align with TV ratings.
“While prior-year rating accounts for the lion’s share of the variability in TV ratings, Twitter’s presence as a top three influencer tells us that Tweeting about live TV may affect program engagement,” said Andrew Somosi, CEO of SocialGuide. “We expected to see a correlation between Twitter and TV ratings, but this study quantifies the strength of that relationship.”
Much of the correlation is being driven by the rise in media consumption across multiple device screens. We know that 80% of U.S. tablet and smartphone owners who watch TV use their device while watching at least several times a month. We also know that 40% of U.S. tablet and smartphone users visit a social network while watching TV.
How well does Twitter align with TV program ratings? The recent Nielsen/SocialGuide study confirmed that increases in Twitter volume correlate to increases in TV ratings for varying age groups, revealing a stronger correlation for younger audiences. Specifically, the study found that for 18-34 year olds, an 8.5% increase in Twitter volume corresponds to a 1% increase in TV ratings for premiere episodes, and a 4.2% increase in Twitter volume corresponds with a 1% increase in ratings for midseason episodes. Additionally, a 14.0% increase in Twitter volume is associated with a 1% increase in TV program ratings for 35-49 year olds, reflecting a stronger relationship between Twitter and TV for younger audiences.
Further, the study found that the correlation between Tweets and TV ratings strengthens for midseason episodes for both age groups. An increase in Twitter volume of 4.2% and 8.4% is associated with a 1% increase in ratings for 18-34 year olds and 35-49 year olds, respectively. Moreover, by midseason Twitter was responsible for more of the variance in ratings for 18-34 year olds than advertising spend.
“The TV industry is dynamic and it was important for us to analyze multiple variables to truly understand Twitter’s impact on TV ratings,” said Mike Hess, Executive Vice President of Media Analytics for Nielsen. “While our study doesn’t prove causality, the correlation we uncovered is significant and we will continue our research to deepen the industry’s understanding of this relationship.”"

Botnet fraud costs advertisers $6 million a month in false clicks

"Security researchers have discovered a botnet they have dubbed "Chameleon" which they calculate is costing display advertisers around $6m (£3.9m) per month by falsely viewing billions of pages and adverts on about 200 sites owned by a small group of publishers.
The discovery points to widespread fraud in which adverts are clicked among networks of sites to generate money for sites and ad networks – though it is still unclear whether it is one or more publishers, or one or more ad networks which supply ads to the sites, which are to blame for the fraud.
Spider.io, a security group which previously pointed out that a flaw in internet Explorer was being exploited by advertising companies to track users, says that the botnet consists of at least 120,000 subverted Windows machines, 95% of them located inside the US."

YouTube has over a billion viewers each month

"In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences. Advertisers have taken notice: all of the Ad Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. And today, we’re announcing a new milestone: YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month.
What does a billion people tuning into YouTube look like?
- Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
- Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
- If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
- PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!"

Wednesday 20 March 2013

China has 215 million cable subscriber households

"Wang Xiaojie, director of the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's (SARFT) Department of Science and Technology, said today that China had more than 140 digital cable subscriber households as of the end of 2012, or roughly 66% overall conversion to digital cable.
At present, China has a total of 214.59 mln cable subscriber households. 143.03 of these have converted to digital cable. 70 mln subscriber households are covered by bi-directional digital cable networks, and 19 mln subscriber households have signed up for bi-directional digital cable, as well as 5.64 mln cable broadband subscribers. By 2015, all urban cable networks at the county level or above are expected to complete digital conversion efforts, and 80% of networks are expected to have implemented bi-directional functionality."

Display advertising is 90% as effective as TV for generating short term sales of Coca Cola


"A Coca-Cola Co. study finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales, but online display ads work about as well as TV, said a company executive in a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think 2013 conference in New York today.
It's a stunning admission for a company who's flagship brand has 61.5 million fans, more than any other brand on Facebook. But Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, isn't giving up on buzz just yet. And he cautioned against reading too much into the research, noting that it covers only buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media.
But when Coca-Cola put buzz sentiment data into the same analytical framework it uses to evaluate other digital media, Mr. Schmidt said, "We didn't see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales."
[...]
Now Mr. Schmidt said Coke is looking to refine how it measures buzz, for example by getting a better idea of how many people buzz actually reaches rather than just counting the raw publicly available comments from such sources as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube.
Coke research was far more favorable for digital display advertising, which it found on average to be 90% as effective as TV at generating sales on a per-impression basis, Mr. Schmidt said. Search was 50% as effective as TV – about the same as out-of-home – with radio coming in between TV and search and print scoring slightly more effective than TV."

Tuesday 19 March 2013

In 2012 American newspapers lost $16 in press ad revenue for every $1 they gained in digital ad revenue

"In 2012, [US] newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it's getting worse, according to a new report by Pew. In 2011, the ratio was just 10-to-1.
The digital ad revolution, always "just around the corner", remains tantalizingly out of reach for most newspapers, which explains why some stalwarts like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have moved to subscription models for their websites to bolster digital ad growth. Just today, the Washington Post announced a paywall.
[...]
Since 2003, print ads have fallen from $45 billion to $19 billion. Online ads have only grown from $1.2 to $3.3 billion. Stop and think about that gap. The total ten-year increase in digital advertising isn't even enough to overcome the average single-year decline in print ads since 2003."
Full Pew report here

Americans watched 9.9 billion online video ads in February 2013

"Continuing to break records, U.S. consumers spent 3.8 billion minutes streaming video advertising in February.
Consumers viewed 9.9 billion video ads, last month, with Google sites (YouTube) serving an all-time high of 2.2 billion ads, comScore found.
BrightRoll Video Network came in second with 1.6 billion ads served in February, followed by Hulu with 1.4 billion, Adap.tv with 1.4 billion and LiveRail.com with 1 billion ads delivered. BrightRoll is also credited with delivering the highest duration of video ads at 859 million minutes, last month.
All told, video ads reached more than 50% of the total U.S. population an average of 63 times during the month. In other words, 178 million Americans watched 33 billion online content videos in February, according to comScore.
Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 61, while CBS Interactive and Google Sites tied for second with an average of 23 ads per viewer."

Monday 18 March 2013

Kiva has made loans to more than 1 million people

"Kiva, the world's largest crowdfunding platform for social good, announced today that it has reached over 1 million people in more than 65 countries through $400 million in microloans. This is a tremendous milestone for the nonprofit organization, which was founded in 2005 to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty and expand economic opportunity.
"This has been an amazing journey over the last seven years," said Matt Flannery, Kiva Co-founder and CEO. "I want to thank the one million borrowers who have proven to the world that it was worth taking a chance on them. You have made Kiva possible."
In their first year, Kiva lenders crowdfunded almost $500,000 in loans. Today, Kiva's community of 900,000 lenders crowdfund more than $1.5 million in loans per week. These small dollar individual loans have helped more than 1 million low-income borrowers start and grow businesses, go to school, improve their homes, buy clean energy products, and more. Through Kiva, anyone with an internet connection can make a loan as little as $25 to the borrower of their choice on Kiva.org. And with Kiva's repayment rate of 98.9%, lenders are able to relend their money again and again, or withdraw it from the system."

Email app Mailbox was sold for rumoured $100m

"Disrupt alumnus Dropbox made the second in a series of super-savvy, super-early stage acquisitions today, picking up hyped-up email management app Mailbox in an acquisition that we’re calling “DropMail.”
We had been hearing that Mailbox was raising money, piquing the interest of Andreessen Horowitz among others, which is why today’s news that the company sold to the harmoniously named Dropbox didn’t come as a surprise. Sometimes an acquisition is the easiest way to raise resources for growth — especially when you’re tackling as expensive a problem as email. And have a six-figure wait list.
And we’re hearing that this particular acquisition was not cheap — The post-pivot startup cost the storage company “well over” $50 million, according to multiple sources. And we’ve heard that that the price was around $100 million in cash and stock."

Over 38,000 open-source designs for 3D printers have been uploaded to Thingiverse.com

"MakerBot also supports Thingiverse.com, where users upload their open source designs. There are designs for over 38,000 items, including jewelry, iPhone cases, and lens cap holders, but also a Virgin Mary toast press, a Mario mask, an alligator head, duct flanges, battery trays, and Advent calendar puzzle pieces (a toy — like an X-Wing starfighter, a snowman, or a mini MakerBot Replicator — within each piece)."

23% of people booking practical driving tests in the UK do so on a mobile device

"Meanwhile, up in Nottingham, the Driving Standards Agency has just redesigned its practical driving test booking service.
[...]
Results? Over 23% of those booking and 27% of those changing practical driving test bookings are now doing so from a mobile device. (Overnight it hits nearly 60% – hypotheses welcome!)
Booking your driving test is not a trivial process. Users  have to choose a date, a venue and give contact details and the like. Yet give people a decent mobile-optimised experience, and they’ll lap it up on their smartphones or tablets."
Note - It takes a long time to book a test:

Thursday 14 March 2013

63% of the apps used daily differ from those used a year ago

"Yes, business is booming. But it’s also unpredictable. About 63% of the apps used daily now differ from those used daily a year ago. Our attention span is so short these days – and the competition is so fierce – that we soon move on to the latest and greatest app.
On average, we only focus on about eight apps at a time. And we use these apps more than you might think: The average smartphone user spends two hours a day with apps, more than double the time spent two years earlier, according to Flurry Analytics.
Where did we find all this free time? It’s hard to say exactly — if you look at the following graphic, the amount of time watching television and surfing the Web is flat in the past couple of years. Of course, we often have apps running in the background, like music-streaming apps, allowing us to multitask.
So consumption of apps is catching up to television viewing – some might say that’s a good thing, that apps are more productive than watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” But as the following graphic shows, productivity apps capture just 2% of our time. Rather, games are stealing the most of our attention – 43% of our time is spent catapulting angry birds at pigs and fighting monsters.
What are the top-performing apps? Apple says Disney's “Temple Run: Oz” adventure game is currently the top paid app for its mobile devices, word game Icomania is the top free app and Supercell’s free medieval strategy game “Clash of Clans” is the top-grossing (thanks to in-app purchases).
Free remains king in app stores – most people aren’t willing to shell out money to buy an app, so developers are keen to find ways to show ads or entice with upgrades. But the prices are higher in the Apple store compared with Google’s, where the apps are far more likely to be free.
At the end of 2012, the average price paid for an app in the Apple store was $3.18 on an iPhone and $4.44 on an iPad, according to Distimo. That compares with an average price of $3.06 in the Google Play store. Those two stores represent about 87% of U.S. smartphone users, according to comScore.
Then there are the super-premium apps. The highest price for an app in Apple’s store is $999.99. According to Distimo, there were 30 such apps as of January, mostly software for specialized industries like piano tuners and anesthetics – though at least two of those apps are now free or $1.99, reflecting the constant shifting of business models."

The Kickstarter campaign to fund a film of Veronica Mars reached $1m in four hours

"Look alive Veronica Mars fans, the Kickstarter project to bring the cult TV show to the big screen is already halfway towards its goal of $2 million.
This makes the Veronica Mars movie the fastest project ever to reach that $1 million juncture. The Pebble watch took about 27 hours to reach its first million (the project went on to take in more than $10 million), the OUYA console took a little over 8 hours. Earlier this month, role-playing game Torment reached the million dollar mark in just 7 hours.
How long did it take Veronica Mars? Just over four hours. Not bad for a TV show that never did better than #138 in the Nielsen ratings and that isn't available to watch on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime. (You can watch the show on TheWB.com and if you haven't ever seen it, you should.)
Veronica Mars is the perfect type of project for a Kickstarter campaign. The show had a cult following and fans that were more than willing to spend money to spread the word and get things done. In an era before Twitter or mainstream Facebook access, Mars fans congregated over discussion forums and fan sites to raise money to create awareness campaigns to keep the show on the air."

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Only 8% of British SMEs have a mobile optimised website

"Although 49 per cent of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) include mobile in their marketing mix, according to a report from Pitney Bowes, only eight per cent have a mobile-optimised website.
SMEs spend an average £28,810 on marketing each year, with print ads still topping the list. Online marketing makes two appearances in the top five most popular methods – email (37 per cent) and Facebook (26 per cent) – but having a mobile site came 15th out of 22 marketing activities."

Spotify has 24 million active users, including 6 million paying subscribers

"When Ek sits for a fireside chat at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival here later today, the Swedish-born, aspiring music industry mogul will be able to share some fresh bragging rights: Spotify has signed another 1 million subscribers since December, bringing the total to 6 million and cementing its position as the fastest-growing digital music company ever -- second in reach only to Internet radio company Pandora. A company representative confirmed the numbers for CNET.
It's no small accomplishment. Music-streaming startups have come and gone like one-hit wonders in recent years. And yet, through a mixture of hype, a quality product, great timing, and shrewd execs and backers, Spotify has risen to prominence even as deep-pocketed behemoths like Google and Apple appear ready to jump into the music streaming business.
Spotify's latest milestone follows a December company event, held in New York, to make two big announcements: Longtime streaming holdout Metallica had signed on exclusively with Spotify, and the company had surpassed 5 million subscribers, 1 million of whom are in the U.S. All told, the company now boasts 24 million active users, well more than double what it had a year ago.
It's impressive progress, but Spotify execs acknowledge they have a long way to go before they can claim success.
"Right now," said Spotify Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Levick, "all the conversations we have are about how do we accelerate this business."
That growth comes as Spotify expands its global footprint. Over the past year, it has doubled to 20 the number of countries in which it's available. In February, it added Italy, Poland, and Portugal. In the coming months, launches are planned across South America and Southeast Asia."
Source:  Cnet, 12th March 2013
Earlier - 5m paying subscribers announced in December 2012
Earlier - 3m in January 2012

Tuesday 12 March 2013

There is little connection between download volumes and mobile game revenues

"Something fascinating has happened in the app industry over the past two years; download volume performance has decoupled from revenue performance almost entirely. A few years ago, the original Angry Birds spent 22 months in the Top 20 chart of biggest revenue generating apps in America. The latest Angry Birds game struggled to stay 2 months in the Top 20.
The app industry revenue generation is now utterly dominated by free downloads that lure consumers into paying for in-game features month after month. The top-grossing iPhone app in America, Clash of Clans, is merely #70 on the download chart. Ironically enough, this emblem of the new era of mobile gaming was created by Supercell, a Finnish company now located in the old Nokia headquarters. Just 50 feet from the Rovio HQ.
The extremes in the mobile app market are only growing more pronounced. Rage of Bahamut, an addictive card battle game, no longer makes it to the Top 1’000 of iPhone apps. Yet it remains the #14 app in America when it comes to revenue generation, far above the new #1 download app, Temple Run: Oz. Very, very few people download the Rage of Bahamut. But those that do end up enslaved by it. Industry rumors peg the daily average revenue per active user of this game to be as high as 80 to 90 cents. That is an amount of money that translates a free download to a massive cash cow even if it gets only 0.5% of the Angry Birds download base."
Source:  Forbes, 6th March 2013

Monday 11 March 2013

Gucci's American mobile site accounts for 27% of traffic and 13% of online revenue

"Fashion brand Gucci is getting more mobile-friendly, with the optimisation of its website. The optimised site was already available in North America and is now offered in Europe, before being rolled out to the Asia Pacific region this Spring.
Since the initial US launch in December, conversion rates have increased by over 70 per cent and revenue grew almost four times year over year. The mobile site already accounts for 27 per cent of the total traffic and 13 per cent of total revenue."

41% of UK web users asked were unaware that Adwords links were paid-for adverts

"Research carried out by Bunnyfoot suggests that many people are unaware of the difference between paid and organic search listings, with 40% of web users unaware they were adverts.
While conducting a research project for an insurance sector client, Bunnyfoot discovered that 81% of users clicked on Google Adwords listings as opposed to natural search results.
Further investigation of this surprising bias revealed that 41 out of the 100 individuals tested did not know that Adwords were paid-for adverts, believing them instead to be the most authoritative links."
Source:  Econsultancy, 28th February 2013
Caution - 100 internet users is a small sample...

Grindr has more than 5 million users

"It is easy to write off Grindr — a location-based dating application for gay men — as a hookup application because, well, that is what it is.
But the company, which is approaching its fourth anniversary, has amassed more than five million users who spend on average 90 minutes each day using the application. Billions of messages fly across the service every year, and 76 percent of the company’s revenue comes from money generated by Grindr users who fork over cash for the service’s premium features."

A typical user looks at a mobile phone 150 times a day

"How Typical User Looks at Mobile 150 Times Per Day Globally
Messaging related 23 times per day
Voice call related 22 times per day
Clock 18 times per day
Music Player 13 times per day
Gaming 12 times per day
Social Media 9 times per day
Alarm 8 times per day
Camera 8 times per day
News and alerts 6 times per day
Calendar 5 times per day
Search 3 times per day
Other random web browsing 3 times per day
Charging phone 3 times per day
Voice mail 1 times per day
Other miscellaneous uses 10 times per day
Total 150 times per day"
Note - LOTS more data available in the blog post!
Update:  Mary Meeker used this in her recent Internet Trends presentation, and has been called out on it by SFGate.
"The person Meeker listed as the source for the slide, mobile consultant Tomi Ahonen, says he never saw any data to back up the 150 times-a-day number. It was a figure he had heard cited at conferences since 2010. The figures presented in Meeker's bar chart were "definitely only opinion," and "not intended in any way as a 'study' of consumer behavior."
Perhaps more significantly, his blog, in introducing the information, was clearly not discussing smartphones. It read: "What would a 'typical user' do with the non-smartphone today ... ?""

90% of national advertisers on the xAd US mobile network take part in 'conquesting'

"I had an interesting catch-up call with xAd this morning. We discussed a number of trends and metrics that the company is seeing in display campaigns running on its network. One of them, which really surprised me, was that “9 out of 10″ of its national advertisers are engaged in “conquesting.” That’s where geofenced messages are shown around competitors’ locations.
Marketing VP Monica Ho told me that national advertiser campaigns on the xAd network often feature one type of ad creative to reach people around the companies’ locations and a different approach and ad creative targeting consumers around competitors’ locations.
This can be highly effective, especially if the campaign creative is really strong."

1 in 8 online ads in America is socially enabled

"The link between digital advertising and social media is becoming all the stronger, too. 1 in 8 web ads are now socially-enabled, meaning they direct consumers to social media destinations, e.g. by asking for a Facebook ‘like’ or Twitter ‘follow’. The most socially-enabled advertising area lies in consumer goods, with almost 1 in 5 of all adverts displaying such characteristics. Indeed, consumer goods take a 22% share of the socially-enabled advertising share."
Source:  Data from comScore, reported by We Are Social, 28th February 2013
Note - I'm sot sure whether this includes ads on Facebook or Twitter, for example...  Clearly 100% of those are socially enabled...

Brazil - Key insights

"Key insights from the 2013 Brazil Digital Future in Focus (#FiFBrasil) report include:
Consumers in Brazil spent more than 27 hours per month online on their desktop computers, representing the highest average engagement of all 8 Latin American markets analyzed. (Source: comScore MMX)
The Brazilian internet audience is very young on average, with 18 percent of users age 18-24 and 30 percent of all users age 25-34. (Source: comScore MMX)
Mobile phones and tablets are becoming more important to the Brazilian internet landscape. Page views from Non-PC devices (i.e. smartphones and tablets) reached an all-time high at nearly 6 percent. (Source: comScore Device Essentials)
Online Retail continues to grow in Brazil with the total number of category page views up 9 percent during 2012. Mercado Livre remains the top Retail property, reaching more than 14 million visitors in December. (Source: comScore MMX)
Online Advertising is on the rise, with more than 789 billion display ad impressions delivered in 2012. Portals and Social Networking are the two largest content categories for delivery of these ads, representing a combined 45 percent of the market. Dafiti.com.br was the largest display advertiser in Brazil with more than 25 billion ad impressions in 2012. (Source: comScore Ad Metrix)
Social Media sites capture the largest percentage of consumers’ time in Brazil at 36 percent. Facebook has emerged as a strong leader in the category with nearly 44 million unique visitors in December 2012, up 22 percent vs. year ago. (Source: comScore MMX)
Online video consumption in Brazil grew 18 percent in 2012. Google Sites (YouTube) remains the top video property, while VEVO ranks second. Facebook was one of the fastest-growing online video properties with a gain in its video-viewing audience of more than 400 percent. (Source: comScore Video Metrix)"

Online sales account for about 5% of the grocery market in the UK

"Morrisons, which had the worst performance of any supermarket chain over the lucrative Christmas period, risks being left behind as the online market soars, analysts warn. When it goes online, it will have to run fast to catch up with rivals who have been selling food over the internet for more than a decade. Tesco.com went live in 2000. Ocado, the upmarket online grocer that sells Waitrose goods, dispatched its first van in 2002.
"Online groceries is about 4.5% to 5% of the market. It is growing around 15% per annum and by 2020 we think it will be worth between 10-12% of the market," said Clive Black, head of research at Shore Capital. "[By 2020] Morrisons would effectively be competing only with 88% of the market and that is a very difficult task.""

The shutdown of Megaupload caused an increase in digital movie sales and rentals

"This week researchers from Wellesley College and Carnegie Mellon University released a comprehensive study that evaluates the impact of Megaupload’s shutdown on digital movie revenues.
Titled “Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales,” the paper compared digital movie revenues across 12 countries. These countries vary in the relative number of Megaupload users, allowing the researchers to estimate the effect of the cyberlocker’s demise on movie sales.
“We were interested in studying the effect of a major piracy site shutdown on demand for digital movie sales since we’ve seen the argument that such efforts could be like a game of whack-a-mole, with a new file-sharing site springing up as soon as one is closed,” assistant professor of Economics Brett Danaher tells TorrentFreak.
“We saw the logic of this argument, but could also imagine a world where shutting down such a large site could change the behavior of some types of consumers,” he adds.
After controlling for a wide range of country-specific trends and other variables the researchers conclude that the latter is the case, Megaupload’s shutdown had a significant effect on digital revenues. The data suggest that the income of two major Hollywood studios was boosted by up to 10 percent.
“Our analysis across 12 countries suggests that, in the 18 weeks following the shutdown, digital revenues for these two studio’s movies were 6-10% higher than they would have been if not for the shutdown,” the researchers write in their paper.
The table [click here to see the table] shows that Megaupload “penetration” was relatively high in Spain and France, where 17% and 11% of Internet subscribers used the site. With less than 2% it was least popular in the United States.
The researchers used these differences for their statistical model and found that movie revenues were affected positively in countries with a high Megaupload penetration.
“For each additional 1% pre-shutdown Megaupload penetration, the post-shutdown sales unit change was 2.5% to 3.8% higher, suggesting that these increases are a causal effect of the shutdown,” they write.
The shutdown of Megaupload caused a 7-10% increase in the number of digital sales and a 4-7% increase in digital rentals.
The results are based on sales numbers reported by two major Hollywood studios, and the researchers suggest that the effect will be similar for other film companies. Whether the effect will remain over time has yet to be seen though."

Friday 8 March 2013

Global websites get more tablet traffic than smartphone traffic



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"After ana­lyz­ing more than 100 bil­lion vis­its to 1000+ web­sites world-wide, Adobe Dig­i­tal Index has dis­cov­ered that global web­sites are now get­ting more traf­fic from tablets than smart­phones, 8% and 7% of monthly page views respec­tively. Pretty impres­sive for a device cat­e­gory that was intro­duced less than three years ago!
We’ve been keep­ing a close eye on how quickly tablets have taken off. Just a year ago in Jan­u­ary we uncov­ered that vis­i­tors using tablets spend 54% more per online order than their coun­ter­parts on smart­phones, and 19% more than desktop/laptop users. Dur­ing the past hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son we saw that 13.5% of all online sales were trans­acted via tablets. And last month before the Super Bowl we learned that online view­er­ship via tablets dou­bles dur­ing big sport­ing events. Now we know that not only is tablet traf­fic more valu­able in terms of ecom­merce and engage­ment, tablets have also become the pri­mary device for mobile browsing."

Thursday 7 March 2013

Time spent on different app categories for smartphones & tablets



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Source:  Blog post by Flurry, 29th October 2012

1,400 fragrances were launched in 2012

"Wonder how many fragrances were launched in 2012 (we know, you were totally losing sleep over it, right)? A whopping 1,400. And now, thanks to Dutch artists Lernert and Sander, you can now smell all of these perfumes together, at once, in one big, fat perfume they're fittingly calling Everything. Perfume phobes, hide your noses.
Apparently, over the past year, Lernert and Sander systematically collected sample vials of every single new fragrance that was launched. Now, they're combining all of them in one handblown bottle (designed to look like an elephantine sample vial) and displaying it at super-chic Parisian boutique Colette, so that innocent shoppers can be assaulted by experience the mix for themselves."
Source:  Refinery29, 1st March 2012

Dixons sold 5 tablets a second in the week before Christmas

"Dixons Retail had a bumper Christmas thanks to 'phenomenal' sales of tablet computers - with five a second flying off its shelves in the week before Christmas.
Heavy demand for the gadgets helped the owner of PC World and Currys overcome competition from clearance sales at Comet, which went into administration towards the end of last year.
Apple iPads made up a third of tablet sales, but Dixons also saw strong demand for the Samsung Galaxy and Google Nexus models.
Dixons sold more than a million tablets in the UK and Ireland in the three months to January 5, pushing its overall like-for-like sales up by a better-than-expected 8 per cent in the period."
Note - This implies that they were all sales in store, but it probably includes online sales too

Wednesday 6 March 2013

An average Facebook user is eligible to see more than 2,000 pieces of content per day

"On average, a Facebook user is eligible to see more than 2,000 pieces of content per day. That’s a lot of content. We’ve tried showing that content in chronological order, and have tested that every time we have, the overall engagement would decrease dramatically, and users would actually see less content because they didn’t find the content they were seeing as interesting and were missing the important stuff that maybe was posted hours ago, so we take each of the 2,000 pieces of content and rank it based on the probability that you’re going to interact with it. On top of this, sponsored content is added in and may bump organic content down, but we’ve minimized the decrease in engagement and make sure to not show too much of this if the user reacts to it negatively."
Source:  Reuters interview with Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik, 5th March 2013
Note - if an average user has about 350 friends, then each friend creates about 6 pieces of content per day (including Likes, pictures and comments)

1 billion endorsements have been given to 56 million LinkedIn members

"Are you one of the 58 million professionals who have been recognized for their skills and expertise on LinkedIn? Skill endorsements are a great way to help build your professional brand, in fact you’re 4 times more likely to be viewed on LinkedIn if you’ve been endorsed. It’s also an effective tool to recognize the wonderful strengths of your colleagues and peers who you’ve worked with first hand.
In less than six months, 1 billion endorsements have been given out on LinkedIn representing thousands of skills, ranging from Visual C++ to Water Treatment and Creative Writing to Fitness. Did you know giving and receiving endorsements also helps members beef up their profiles? Not only have we seen a 2x weekly increase in recommendations since the launch of endorsements, members are also actively adding new skills to their profiles to showcase their full expertise. Not to mention the many, many coffee dates we know are being scheduled as a result."

Hugo Chavez had a staff of 200 to help run his Twitter account

"It is known mainly for transmitting celebrity trivia and narcissism, but in the hands of Hugo Chávez Twitter has become something else: a tool of government.
Venezuela's president has harnessed the social networking and microblogging service for his socialist revolution by encouraging the population to tweet him its concerns.
Chávez's Twitter account, @chavezcandanga, has exceeded 720,000 followers after gaining a reputation as a way to bypass bureaucracy and appeal directly to the president. It gains about 2,000 followers daily.
The leftist leader ordered the establishment of a 200-strong team to process and respond to the avalanche of messages complaining about government services and requesting help.
"This telephone is close to melting. Now I am aware of many things going on here," said Chávez, brandishing his BlackBerry, during a recent televised meeting with police officials.
Sometimes Twitter bites back. Earlier this week Colombia's former president Alvaro Uribe, a regular Chávez target, tweeted from @AlvaroUribeVel: "I ask President Hugo Chávez to stop being a coward hurling insults remotely."
Since signing on to the service in April, Venezuela's leader has routinely ordered ministers to attend to specific tweets. Told of an apparent mugging and kidnapping, he tweeted: "I'm telling [interior] minister Tarek [El Aissami] to investigate!! Good luck friend."
Chávez said some pleas for medical help haunted him. "These things stay with you. Sometimes I can't sleep because I think 'Oh my God!' and I start to reply and I call the ministers: 'Help me here. Locate this person.'"
The president said he has received more than 287,921 pleas for help, including 19,000 for a job, 17,000 for a house, 12,000 for credit and 7,000 for legal aid."
Source:  The Guardian, 10th August 2010
Note - Hugo Chavez Frias had 4.1m followers when he died, so it's likely the staff numbers had to grow

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Samsung has sold more than 40 million Galaxy S3 Smartphones


"After the incredible success of the Samsung Galaxy S III (S3) Android Smartphone, which sold over 40 million units worldwide, Samsung returns with its new flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S IV (S4)."

Monday 4 March 2013

Official YouTube Statistics - March 2013

"Viewership
Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages
In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth
Millions of subscriptions happen each day. Subscriptions allow you to connect with someone you're interested in — whether it's a friend, or the NBA — and keep up with their activity on the site
YouTube Partner Program
Created in 2007, we now have more than a million creators from over 30 countries around the world earning money from their YouTube videos
Monetization
Thousands of advertisers are using TrueView in-stream and 65% of our in-stream ads are now skippable
We have more than a million advertisers using Google ad platforms, the majority of which are small businesses
Mobile and Devices
25% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices
People watch one billion views a day on YouTube mobile
YouTube is available on 400 million devices
Traffic from mobile devices tripled in 2011
Content ID
Content ID scans over 100 years of video every day
More than 3,000 partners use Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label
We have more than eight million reference files (over 500,000 hours of material) in our Content ID database; it's among the most comprehensive in the world. The number has doubled in the last year
Over a third of YouTube's total monetized views come from Content ID
More than 200 million videos have been claimed by Content ID"
Source:  YouTube Press Statistics, retrieved 4th March 2013
Earlier - Stats (sadly largely different stats) from August 2011

Wal-Mart customers buy Pop-Tarts when hurricanes are forecast

"HURRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barrelling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.
A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.
The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products - and not just the usual flashlights. "We didn't know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane," Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. "And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer."
Thanks to those insights, trucks filled with toaster pastries and six-packs were soon speeding down Interstate 95 toward Wal-Marts in the path of Frances. Most of the products that were stocked for the storm sold quickly, the company said.
Such knowledge, Wal-Mart has learned, is not only power. It is profit, too."
Source:  New York Times, 14th November 2004
Note - Yes, that's right - 2004.  It's a great example of how consumer analysis and 'Big Data' aren't things that have only happened in the last couple of years.

Friday 1 March 2013

Twitter exposure drives site visitation

"Three key findings on site visitation and Tweet exposure
Twitter users who see Tweets from mobile/tech brands are more likely to visit brand websites.
Twitter users who see mobile/tech brand Tweets are more likely to search for brand websites online.
Twitter users who see mobile/tech brand Tweets are more likely to visit third-party review sites and check out reviews on products or brands."
Methodology:
"The study analyzed over 6,000 users and their site visitation behavior in the United Kingdom over the Christmas shopping season. The study looked at three different groups of users. The first group consisted of those users who were exposed to at least one Tweet by a mobile product or carrier brand. The two remaining groups of users were control groups: one consisted of Twitter visitors who were not exposed to mobile/tech brand Tweets, and the other represented the average internet user."

20% of Domino Pizza's UK sales come from mobile devices

"Domino's Pizza has seen a doubling of orders taken on mobile devices during 2012, the company has announced.
The takeaway delivery company said that for the 53 weeks ending December 30 a total of 19.7% of online orders were made through smartphones and tablets.
The figure was almost a doubling of mobile ordering  from a year earlier, when 10.1% were made via those devices.
Domino's said 55.7% of all UK sales in 2012 were made online, up from 44.3% in 2011."

Mobile devices account for 30% of FT.com's traffic

"The FT’s total paid circulation was more than 602,000 across print and online, modestly up on 2011, with digital subscriptions exceeding print circulation for the first time. Digital subscriptions increased 18% to almost 316,000.
Mobile devices now account for 30% of FT.com traffic and 15% of new subscriptions. FT Web App now has 3.5 million users."

Average engagement levels with pictures posted to Instagram by brands

"Social media measurement and analytics firm Simply Measured has released its third "quarterly" study on brand engagement on Instagram, finding 59% of brand consultancy Interbrand's Top 100 brands are on the photo-sharing network, which is up slightly from 54% in November.
In addition, Simply Measured found engagement has increased 35% with the average brand photo receiving 4,800 likes, comments, tweets and Facebook shares."

Uplift in performance from ecommerce site Skinny Ties after switching to responsive design



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Source:  Blog post by Skinny Ties, 24th October 2012

American retailers' risk from showrooming comsumers



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Source:  Research by Placed, February 2013
Figures show an index from all stores studied.  These are the ones that are most at risk