Tuesday 30 April 2013

Only 30% of content on The Telegraph online appears in print

"In an average day The Telegraph now produces:
-- 600 articles
-- 40 substantial videos
-- 25 picture galleries
-- 25 concurrently updated blog and an average of five live news blogs across news and sport.
-- Gallagher says barely a third of the output of The Telegraph newsroom goes out in print."
Note - I'd love to see a comparison of different newspapers.  I'm guessing that this would be more pronounced for The Mail Online for example.  Any media studies students want to do a fun project?

A Facebook fan is worth an average of $174 to a brand

"A Facebook fan is worth $174 to a brand, up 28% since 2010, according to Syncapse, a social media marketing firm.
Syncapse worked with research firm Hotspex on a survey based on data collected from more than 2,000 U.S. panelists in late January and early February. The study compared Facebook fans and non-fans based and their corresponding product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, media value, cost of acquisition and brand affinity to arrive at the figure.
Though $174 is an average figure, the value varies from brand to brand.
The reason, says Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons, is "what a consumer would spend on Zara vs. Coke." A higher average purchase price makes a fan more valuable.
The study also contrasts fans and non-fans. The former are much more active in social media. The average fan is a fan of 10 brand pages at a given time. On the other hand, almost two-thirds of non-fans have followed 10 or fewer brand pages. Three quarters of fans are likely to share good brand experiences and share promotions and discounts with their Facebook friends. About two-thirds of fans are likely to share a bad brand experience."
Source:  Mashable, 17th April 2013
Note - There is obviously lots of controversy about this sort of analysis - clearly fans are always likely to spend more on a brand than non-fans, and you can't necessarily say that being a fan creates that - treat with caution.

Path is growing at a rate of a million users a week

"Path, a more intimate social-networking app that’s like a personal journal, is now growing by 1 million registered users a week after its most recent launch.
The newest version of Path includes a way to message your friends — for which Path limits to 150 — and send them stylized stickers like other top messaging apps. Around half of Path’s registered users (now at 9 million) are regularly using the app on a monthly basis, CEO Dave Morin said.
Most of the growth is now occurring in English-speaking parts of the population after seeing significant growth in Central and South America — particularly among Spanish-speaking populations — he said. He said the growth started with Venezuela, where Path added around 500,000 users in a weekend, and then spread up through Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean before reaching Spanish speakers in the U.S.
Now, Path is among the top apps on the App Store, and has shown some significant staying power, according to AppData."
Source:  WSJ, 25th April 2013

More smartphones than feature phones were sold in Q1 2013

"The worldwide mobile phone market grew 4% year over year in the seasonally slow first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) as smartphones outshipped feature phones for the first time. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 418.6 million mobile phones in 1Q13 compared to 402.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012 and 483.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012.
In the worldwide smartphone market, vendors shipped 216.2 million units in 1Q13, which marked the first time more than half (51.6%) the total phone shipments in a quarter were smartphones. The market grew 41.6% compared to the 152.7 million units shipped in 1Q12, but 5.1% lower than the 227.8 million units shipped in 4Q12.
"Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "As a result, the balance of smartphone power has shifted to phone makers that are most dependent on smartphones."
"In addition to smartphones displacing feature phones, the other major trend in the industry is the emergence of Chinese companies among the leading smartphone vendors," noted Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team. "A year ago, it was common to see previous market leaders Nokia, BlackBerry (then Research In Motion), and HTC among the top five. While those companies have been in various stages of transformation since, Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE as well as Coolpad and Lenovo, have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones.""

Google spent $291 million on acquisitions in Q1 2013

"Google spent $291 million on eight acquisitions during the first quarter, according to company filing with the federal government.
From the company's 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google spent a mere 0.5 percent of its $50.1 billion cash that it reported during its first quarter of 2013.
Out of that, $150 million was attributed to patents and already developed technology, $133 million to goodwill, $24 million went on customer relationships, and $16 million to net liabilities assumed.
In the filing, Google said: "These acquisitions generally enhance the breadth and depth of our expertise in engineering and other functional areas, our technologies, and our product offerings."
It's not so much that Google made acqusitions during the quarter — which included Channel Intelligence for $125 million, and Wavii for approximately $30 million, and four other firms that were not publicly disclosed — but that the company spent so much."

Monday 29 April 2013

The median number of Facebook friends by location



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Source:  Data from Wolfram Alpha, reported on their blog, 24th April 2013
Note that the data comes from all of the people who have used Wolfram alpha to look at their own Facebook page stats, so the sample is not necessarily representative of all Facebook users
Also - Lots more data given in the post here

More messages are sent through mobile chat apps than through SMS

"Chat apps such as WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage have overtaken the text message as the favourite way to tap out a note to friends, undermining the traditional SMS cash cow for mobile operators.
The data, collected for the Financial Times by telecoms and media consultancy Informa, highlights the rapid rise of a technology that did not exist five years ago but is seen by some as a potential challenger to Facebook’s dominance in social networking.
There were more instant messages being sent daily by the end of last year than there were text messages, Informa said.
The consultancy expects “over the top” messaging to more than double to 41bn per day this year – more than twice the number of text messages expected to be sent."

It takes over 45,000 plays on Spotify to generate the same revenue as one album sale

"Consider Pandora and Spotify, the streaming music services that are becoming ever more integrated into our daily listening habits. My BMI royalty check arrived recently, reporting songwriting earnings from the first quarter of 2012, and I was glad to see that our music is being listened to via these services. Galaxie 500's "Tugboat", for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times "Tugboat" was played there, Galaxie 500's songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each).
To put this into perspective: Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one-- one-- LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)"

Friday 26 April 2013

New product innovation is shifting from developed to emerging markets

"We can see this recent shift take form if we focus on new product innovation between 2008 and 2012. In 2008, the world’s 26 developed market countries, which include the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany and Canada, generated 75 percent of global new product innovation, while the 47 emerging markets launched the remaining 25 percent.
In 2012, however, emerging market countries like China, Brazil, India and Mexico stepped up their innovation efforts and entered the list of top 10 innovative markets. Overall, the emerging markets contributed 31 percent of the world’s new product innovation in 2012, while innovation in developed markets dropped to 69 percent."

The growth of mobile connections

"The first commercial citywide cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979
The milestone of 1 billion mobile phone connections was reached in      2002
The 2 billion mobile phone connections milestone was reached in 2005
The 3 billion mobile phone connections milestone was reached in 2007
The 4 billion mobile phone connections milestone was reached in February 2009"

Next Generation Media Quarterly - April 2013

My new presentation is now on Slideshare, looking at key stats & stories from the past 3 months.  Find out why Airbnb loves hearts!





Thursday 25 April 2013

'You're more likely to survive a plane crash than to click on a banner ad'

I've added this one as an example of a stat that is clearly not true, but that gets quoted a lot.  (Another one is 'more people have a mobile phone than a toothbrush', but that's another story).  This stat has been doing the rounds since about 2011,and was recently repeated by Digiday, who should know better, but is hard to trace back to it's original maths or logic.


Solve Media first published the stat in a deck with a number similar stats, but with no sources given.  Solve Media place ads in CAPTCHAs and so have a vested interest in saying that other ad formats don't work.  You can argue that I have a vested interest in saying that banners do work, but more than that I'm just irritated by the lack of sources or explanation, and the deliberately meaningless comparison.

"How annoying are banner ads? You know, those ubiquitous advertisements that drop down in your face when you open most news sites? The worst are the ones that expand when you scroll over them, forcing you to click on them no matter how hard to try to avoid it. If you hate banner ads as much as we do, you are not alone: most people do not click on them. Solve Media, an advertising consulting company, has discovered how much more likely you are to do even the most statistically unlikely of things than click on one of these intrusive advertisements, Business Insider reports. For example, "you are 31.25 times more likely to win a prize in the Mega Millions than you are to click on a banner ad." Not only that, "you are 87.8 times more likely to apply to Harvard and get in...112.50 times more likely to sign up for and complete NAVY SEAL training...279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest...and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad." It's unclear how they figured this out, or if the methodology is all that sound, but we're going to hazard a guess that people hate banner ads enough to enjoy the numbers anyway."

Online ad spend rose by 43% in Slovakia in 2012

"Investing in Internet advertising even during downturns total advertising budgets continue to grow strongly. On the Slovak market in roku2012 year increase investment accounted for more than 43%. In absolute terms amounted Internet advertising market in Slovakia by monitoring IAB Slovakia value of EUR 64.6 million, thus exceeding even the most optimistic Metz. The media mix consists of 22% of internet investments at an estimated advertising spending 300 million euros."
Source:  Press release by IAB Slovakia, April 2013, translated through Google Translate

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Apple sells one iPad for every two iPhones

"The Company sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 19.5 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold just under 4 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter."
Earlier - Q4 2012 Results

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Netflix has 29.2 million subscribers in the US for its basic streaming service

"Netflix now has 29.2 million U.S. customers for its $8-a-month U.S. streaming service, the largest part of its business."
Source: Reuters, 23rd April 2013
Earlier (& not a comparable stat sadly) - Jan 2013 - One quarter of American homes use Netflix steaming video

Monday 22 April 2013

TV accounted for 63% of global advertising spend in 2012

"Global ad spend reached $350 billion in 2012 - representing a 4.3% year-on-year increase - with TV accounting for almost two thirds of the overall revenue.
According to Nielsen's quarterly Global AdView Pulse report, TV accounted for 62.8% of global ad revenue last year, demonstrating the medium's efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to advertising.
Though newspaper and magazine spend decreased - down -1.6% and -0.2%, respectively - they maintained second and third places based on a share of overall ad spend. Newspapers accounted for almost 20% and magazines accounted for 8%, proving that they remain major platforms in which advertisers choose to communicate with consumers.
Display Internet advertising experienced the fastest growth across all mediums at almost 10%, followed by outdoor advertising, which saw a 7.7% growth.
Cinema ad spend also experienced an increase in revenue - up 6% over the year - though overall, accounted for just 0.3% of the 2012 global spend.
"With 63% of ad revenue being spent to advertise on TV, it's clear that the medium is widely regarded as the most efficient and effective way to reach consumers, continuing to grow especially in emerging markets," said Randall Beard, Global Head, Advertiser Solutions for Nielsen."

More people watch TV programmes on the BBC iPlayer on a tablet than a smartphone

"More TV viewers watched BBC programmes like Top Gear and Doctor Who from a tablet computer than a mobile for the first time in March.
Figures released by the corporation on Friday show that BBC iPlayer viewing on tablet devices surpassed smartphones by 200,000 viewers last month.
The BBC said the landmark was driven by TV shows, rather than radio – proving that tablet computers are rapidly becoming the second screen for TV viewing.
A bumper month of BBC programmes, led by a two-part Top Gear special from Africa and this year's Comic Relief, helped the iPlayer equal its best month for online views, with 272m requests. Daily views of the TV catch-up service remained high with an average of 8.1m.
The BBC said Neil Gaiman's Radio 4 sci-fi series, Neverwhere, featuring a star-studded cast including Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch, Homeland's David Harewood, and film star James McAvoy, was the most popular radio programme on the iPlayer last month, with 147,000 requests for its first episode.
Total radio listening on the iPlayer grew to 72m plays in March, according to the corporation – a 7% rise on the previous month."
Source:  The Guardian, 19th April 2013

A 30% increase in positive tweets is 4x more more effective at driving sales for a video game than a 30% increase in ATL advertising budgets



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Source:  Report by Deloitte, reported in The Wall Blog, 19th April 2013
Methodology: "The Deloitte study, ‘Tweets for Sales: Gaming’, analysed 100 best-selling Xbox and PlayStation 3 video game titles of 2012 in the UK and looked at the impact that Tweet sentiment and reach have on sales."

US Ad Spend for 2011 & 2012 by format & buying model


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Source:  Press release from the IAB, 16th April 2013

Digital advertising spend rose to $36.6 billion in the US in 2012, including $3.4 billion for mobile

"Digital advertising revenues climbed to a milestone high of $36.6 billion in 2012, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full-year of 2012. That historic number marks a 15 percent rise over 2011’s full-year number, which itself had been the highest on record, at $31.7 billion. The report, released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC U.S., additionally reveals that 2012’s fourth quarter numbers, at $10.3 billion, rose by 14.9 percent from $9 billion in the final quarter of 2011. These 2012 Q4 figures represent an uptick of 11.6 percent over Q3 2012, which came in at $9.2 billion.
Other highlights include:
For the second year in a row, mobile achieved triple-digit growth year-over-year. The past year saw the mobile category surge 111 percent to $3.4 billion, pivoting off of 2011’s record-breaking 149 percent year-over-year rise to $1.6 billion. Mobile accounted for 9 percent of total internet ad revenue in 2012.
Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, brought in $2.3 billion, marking a significant year-over-year increase of 29 percent in 2012, compared to $1.8 billion in 2011.
Search revenues in 2012 totaled $16.9 billion or 46 percent of 2012 revenues, up 14.5 percent from $14.8 billion in 2011.
Display-related advertising revenues in 2012 totaled $12 billion or 33 percent of 2012 revenues, up almost 9 percent from $11 billion in 2011.
Retail advertisers continue to represent the largest category of internet ad spending, accounting for 20 percent in 2012, followed by financial services, which is responsible for 13 percent of the year’s revenues.
“These record-breaking numbers represent a paradigm shift when it comes to marketers recognizing the role a multiplicity of screens plays in effectively reaching today’s consumers,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Mobile, in particular, soared due to its ubiquity and intrinsic ability to serve as a powerful digital dashboard that travels with you from morning commute to nighttime video viewing and beyond. The significant increase in digital video also underscores the importance of the upcoming Digital Content NewFronts and the vitality that sight, sound and motion play for both consumers and advertisers in the digital era.”
“As Smartphones get smarter, cellular networks get faster and user penetration of smart mobile devices increases, the combination of personalization and location will have tremendous appeal to marketers,” said David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S. “We are just at the tip of the iceberg.”
“For the third consecutive year, digital media ad revenue has racked up double-digit growth, demonstrating the strength of interactive advertising and marketers’ commitment to be where consumers are,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics, and Measurement, IAB."

Digital advertising spend rose to €158m in Ireland in 2012 including €9.9m for mobile

"The 2012 IAB PwC Adspend Study records a like for like growth of 12.3% year on year for the Irish market. This double-digit growth for digital is in strong contrast to the overall 6.2% decrease in adspend on other media as tracked by Nielsen for the same period.
Digital Advertising Formats (Excluding Mobile)
Paid-for-Search advertising has grown by 24% year on year with a 45% share of online adspend at €66.6m. The dominant performance of the Search format reflects the pattern of spend across Europe.
Display advertising holds a 34% share with a spend of €50.6m and an increase of €2.8m on 2011. Display is the format beloved by brands. The growth in the display format can be attributed to the following factors: increased spend on video advertising, and growth in spend on new innovative digital formats such as Home Page Takeovers. Display advertising on social media sites has grown by 9% yoy reaching €6.3m for 2012 in Ireland.
Classified advertising online grew by 13% in 2012 and holds a 20% share of online adspend at €29m.
FMCG is the top advertiser category in Display Spend
FMCG advertisers are the top spending category in online display spend with a category share of 15% of total display spend. Finance is in second position at 12%, followed by Telcos at 11%.
Property/Recruitment and Auto continue to dominate Classified adspend.
The top-spending category for classified advertising in 2012 is Auto at 36% followed closely by Property/Recruitment in second place at 34%. These 2 categories continue to hold the top spending positions of the classified format.
Irish Mobile Adspend
In 2012 mobile adspend reached €9.9m, with Display and SMS/MMS advertising accounting for 82% of this revenue and Mobile Search holding an 18% share. FMCG is the top spending category on Mobile Display/SMS/MMS.
Total Digital Adspend including mobile
The digital channel has broken the €150m milestone in 2012 with a total digital adspend including mobile of €158m.
Key Drivers for growth:
1) Growth of digital consumption
Comscore records a 10% growth in unique visits in 2012 up to 2.6m
Average hours online per person per week is 19.5 (Comscore)
Smartphone Penetration is 43%, with 61% of users going online via smartphones every day (Google: Our Mobile Planet Study 2012)
2) Irish Marketers growing online budget
80% of Medium/Large Businesses are committed to growing their digital budget in 2013 (Alternatives Marketing Watch Survey Dec 2012)"

Spotify is available in 28 markets

"Music streaming giant Spotify has launched its service in eight new countries, taking it to a total of 28 markets worldwide. The Sweden-headquartered firm is expanding into Asia — via Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia — and Latin America — via Mexico — for the first time, while it has added support for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland in Europe."
Source:  The Next Web, 16th April 2013

Daft Punk's Get Lucky broke Spotify streaming records

"Dance duo Daft Punk's first new single in eight years, Get Lucky, has broken Spotify streaming records.
The comeback, which features singer Pharrell Williams, had the biggest streaming day for a single track in the US and UK on the day of its release.
The Swedish online music site did not release the number of streams for the track which features on the DJs' new album, Random Access Memories.
Spotify's Will Hope said the album would be "the biggest" this year.
"There was never any doubt that the first original single from Daft Punk in years was going to be one of the biggest debut singles of 2013," the director of label relations said.
"We expect the album to become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, on Spotify this year," he added.
Daft Punk broke the one-day streaming record previously held by British band Bastille's single Pompeii in the UK.
Thrift Shop, a single by Seattle-based rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis, held the record in the US."

Friday 19 April 2013

Airbnb got 30% more engagement by changing from an icon from a star to a heart

"For a couple years, registered Airbnb users have been able to star the properties they browse, and save them to a list. But Gebbia’s team wondered whether just a few tweaks here and there could change engagement, so they changed that star to a heart. To their surprise, engagement went up by a whopping 30%. The star, they realized, was a generic web shorthand and a utilitarian symbol that didn’t carry much weight. The heart, by contrast, was aspirational. "It showed us the potential for something bigger," Gebbia tells Co.Design. And in particular, it made them think about the subtle limitations of having a search-based service. "You have to have search," Gebbia says. "But what if you don’t know where you want to go?""
Source:  Fast Code Design, October 2012

Wednesday 17 April 2013

WhatsApp is the most-used independent smartphone app in nearly every country in the world

"There are plenty of 99-cent smartphone app success stories, but few as big as WhatsApp.
First launched in 2009, the cross-platform messaging app has charted a stratospheric rise in popularity. Today, WhatsApp is the single-most-used independent smartphone app in nearly every country in the world. It has hundreds of millions of users, and processes as many as 20 billion messages per day. And, as CEO Jan Koum said onstage at D: Dive Into Mobile on Tuesday, WhatsApp is now bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users. The company daily processes eight billion inbound messages and 12 billion outbound."

Video viewing across devices by teens and young adults in the US



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Source:  The Teen Transition, Nielsen, 16th April 2013

Device ownership among teens and young adults in the US



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Source:  The Teen Transition, Nielsen, 16th April 2013

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Nearly 250 million Chinese shop online

"China's online shopping user base reached 242 mln in 2012, comprising 42.9% of China's total internet user base, according to data released today in the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)'s "2012 China Online Shopping Market Research Report." China's online shopping gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached RMB 1.26 trln in 2012, up 66.5% YoY. Online retail transactions accounted for 6.1% of consumer goods retail transactions in 2012. The number of people using mobile handsets to make online purchases in 2012 totaled 55.4 mln, accounting for 13.2% of mobile handset internet users."

Monday 15 April 2013

Psy's Gentleman had 60 million views in the first weekend



Uploaded late on 12th April 2013; View count retrieved 15th April

Update - 17th April - It hit 100m views after 4 days, becoming the fastest ever to 100m views
Update - 22nd April - 200m views in 9 days

April 2013 Mobile Overview


2013 04 mobile overview from bge20

Source:  Benedict Evans, 12th April 2013

Global PC shipments fell by 14% Y-o-Y in Q1 2013

"Personal-computer shipments plummeted in every region of the world in the first quarter as buyers opted for smartphones and tablet computers and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s newest operating system met with weak demand.
Global PC unit shipments fell 14 percent in the first quarter - the worst such decline on record - to 76.3 million, a bigger drop than the 7.7 percent decline IDC had forecast, the market researcher said in a statement yesterday. The slump was the steepest since IDC began tracking shipments in 1994.
Every PC maker except China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. (992) experienced declines as businesses chose to install Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system on employees’ computers instead of the newer Windows 8, Jay Chou, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts- based IDC, said in an interview. Consumers also shunned Windows 8 in favor of smartphones and tablets, which can handle many of the same tasks, he said."

Friday 12 April 2013

37% of American teens have a smartphone; 23% have a tablet

"Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.
These are among the new findings from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey that explored technology use among 802 youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Key findings include:
78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.
23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.
95% of teens use the internet.
93% of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71%) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members."

New mothers spend 35% more time online than the general population

"Research from BabyCentre, the online and mobile resource for new and expectant mums, suggests that mothers spend 35% more time online than the general population.
Internet usage after becoming a mother increases by 45%, email by 31% and mobile by 28%, according to the survey. On the flipside, magazine readership declines by 55%, while TV viewing slumps by 36%.
The smartphone quickly becomes the mother's significant other: 36% of women purchase a smartphone as a result of becoming a mum, while 59% of mothers called it their "do-everything device".
Respondents said they feel more guilty (+186%), rushed (+121%), and stressed (+39%) when shopping compared to how they felt pre-children. As a result of this shift, 62% said they prefer to do all their shopping online.
It is not just media consumption habits that change when children arrive: 68% of women change their purchase criteria for everything, including clothing, beauty products and cars."

There are 5 million 'Zero TV' households in the US

"Some people have had it with TV. They've had enough of the 100-plus channel universe. They don't like timing their lives around network show schedules. They're tired of $100-plus monthly bills.
A growing number of them have stopped paying for cable and satellite TV service, and don't even use an antenna to get free signals over the air. These people are watching shows and movies on the Internet, sometimes via cellphone connections. Last month, the Nielsen Co. started labeling people in this group "Zero TV" households, because they fall outside the traditional definition of a TV home. There are 5 million of these residences in the U.S., up from 2 million in 2007."

77% of mobile searches take place at home or at work



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Source:  Google & Nielsen's Mobile Search Moments report, March 2013
Note 1 - I'm assuming that Tablet searches are included in this
Note 2 - I'm not quite sure why this doesn't add up to 100%

Weixin (WeChat) has 40 million users outside China

"During the 2013 annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan province today, Tencent (0700.HK) president Liu Zhiping said the internet and mobile services firm's WeChat mobile instant messaging platform now had 40 mln overseas users, and had become the top application in app stores in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia."

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Mobile accounts for 10% of UK digital ad spend

"In 2002 less than £200 million was spent on UK internet advertising – 10 years later, digital advertising spend crosses the £5 billion mark. In 2012 digital advertising increased, like-for-like*, by 12.5% on 2011 to a record annual high of £5.42 billion – up by £607 million from £4.81 billion according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) digital adspend report, conducted byPwC.
Mobile accounts for over half of digital ad growth
Just as digital spend crossed the £5 billion mark in 2012, mobile spend reached its own half billion pound milestone. Fuelled by smartphone ownership hitting almost two-thirds (64%) of the UK population in December 2012¹, mobile advertising grew like-for-like by 148% to £526.0 million in 2012 from £203.2 million in 2011. The actual increase of £322.7 million in mobile ad spend over 2011 represents over half (53%) of the £607.3 million increase in total digital ad spend.
Mobile now accounts for 9.7% of all digital advertising spend compared to 1.1% in 2009 – a huge increase in share in just three years.
“Mobile has reached this milestone because marketers are becoming more attuned to the ‘always on’ nature of consumers who expect to engage with content wherever they are. Consequently, advertisers are increasingly buying integrated campaigns across online and mobile rather than regarding mobile as an afterthought,” says Tim Elkington, Director of Research & Strategy at the Internet Advertising Bureau. "There's simply so much buzz around mobile. In the last 6 months, 20 more of the UK’s top 100 advertisers have produced mobile-optimised websites; 4G mobile ultra-broadband is enabling a new era of richer content consumption with tablets predicted to outsell PCs in 2013². This will help maintain mobile’s significant momentum in attracting both consumer attention and advertising pounds.”
Even without a prevalent 4G network, mobile video advertising grew 1,601% from £0.8 million in 2011 to £13.0 million in 2012. Total mobile display advertising (including video) increased like-for-like by 121% to £150.0 million in 2012. Mobile search grew like-for-like by 164% to £365.0 million – accounting for 69% of mobile ad spend. The remaining £11million of mobile ad revenue is primarily accounted for by classifieds, SMS/MMS and other smaller advertising formats.
Digital advertising formats
Display advertising across the entire digital landscape, boosted by the increase in video and social media advertising, grew in line with the market at 12.4% on a like-for-like basis to £1.30 billion from £1.14 billion in 2011, representing a 24% share of digital ad spend in 2012.
Video advertising grew 46% to £160.0 million from £109.0 million, accounting for 12% of online and mobile display in 2012; up from 10% in 2011. In the last threeyears video ad spend has increased almost six-fold (471%).
Social media advertising grew 24% to £328.4 million from £265.0 million. In the last three years social media spend has increased almost four-fold (383%).
Online and mobile sponsorship advertising grew 34% to £65.7 million from £49.0 million, accounting for 5% of digital display. In the last threeyears digital sponsorship spend has increased 128%.
Online in-game advertising revenue grew 30% to £23.4 million from £18.0 million in 2011.
Paid-for search marketing increased 14.5% on a like-for-like basis to £3.17 billion from £2.77 billion – representing a 58% share of digital advertising.
Classifieds grew 6.3% like-for-like to £853.8 million from £788.0 million – accounting for 16% of digital ad spend in 2012. Recruitment classifieds showed strong growth of 7.6% from £276.6 million in 2011 to £297.7 million in 2012.
FMCG overtakes finance as top advertiser category
The consumer goods sector (FMCG) overtook the finance sector as the biggest spender on digital display advertising – accounting for almost 16% of display ad spend in 2012. FMCG’s share has almost doubled   in the last three years – from 9% in the first half of 2009 – as FMCG marketers have realised digital’s ability to deliver brand awareness, particularly as an amplifying element in integrated media campaigns.
Anna Bartz, Senior Manager at PwC, said: “The advertising market is shifting toward storytelling and integrated campaigns which give greater prominence to video and display formats with a higher degree of interactivity with the target audience. Over the past two years, the digital advertising revenue model has also changed from an emphasis on direct response to being more about branding and awareness.”
The top five display advertising sectors in 2012 are completed by finance (15%), entertainment & media (13%), retail (12%) and technology (9%).
In comparison, across mobile display only, entertainment & media are the top spenders (accounting for 16% of mobile display only) followed by consumer goods (13%), retail (12%), finance (12%) and technology (11%)."
Source:  Press release from IAB UK, 10th April 2013
Earlier - 2011's figures

One billion digital singles have been downloaded in the UK

"The music industry today celebrates a major milestone in its digital evolution, with the total number of digital singles sold in the UK hitting one billion – according to data tracked by the Official Charts Company.
The 1 billion landmark was reached yesterday evening (Monday), nine years after legal downloads launched in the UK. This period has seen a revolution in music consumption for music fans, artists, record labels and digital services alike.
Adele’s Someone Like You was also confirmed as the most downloaded single of all time by the Official Charts Company, followed closely by Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5 FT Christina Aguilera, and Gotye FT Kimbra’s Somebody That I Used To Know."

Tuesday 9 April 2013

The Walking Dead has had over 100 million views on Youku

"AMC's "The Walking Dead" is hugely popular in the United States, but it's also proven a niche hit on China's leading online video site, Youku. It has more than 100 million views for the recently concluded third season -- an average of 6.8 million views per episode. Though that's a small figure considering China's huge online population, the show has attracted an audience multinational marketers highly covet: well-educated professionals in tier-one cities.
"The number of users who like American shows and the stickiness of the American shows are both increasing," said Maggie Xiong, director-media development at Youku's parent company, Youku-Tudou, who handles international TV-content acquisition. American TV shows are the fastest-growing content category at Youku, with page views quadrupling between September 2012 and January 2013.
The video site, which began as a platform for user-generated content, started building its library of licensed U.S. TV programs in 2010. Youku has purchased rights to 33 shows so far this year, including "The Vampire Diaries," "Modern Family," "Pretty Little Liars," "Revenge" and "2 Broke Girls." Youku spent $118.3 million on content acquisition in 2012, according to the company's financial results."

Monday 8 April 2013

Local businesses that advertise on Yelp receive an average of $23,000 in extra revenue

"The Boston Consulting Group, a leading advisor on business strategy, recently surveyed 4,800 business owners to learn the economic impact Yelp has on small businesses. The results are eye opening: small businesses with a free business owner’s account saw an average of $8,000 in annual revenue from Yelp.
Let that sink in for a minute. That’s $8,000 gained just by claiming their free business account on Yelp. Clearly, local businesses are benefiting from a Yelp halo effect that translates into very real profits.
Even more interesting, the survey revealed that Yelp advertisers benefit nearly three times as much, generating average annual revenues from Yelp of more than $23,000.
For certain categories, the returns were even higher. Breaking out the numbers, we saw a number of categories doing exceptionally well advertising to purchase-minded Yelpers:
Home -- $54,000*
Automotive -- $39,000*
Local services -- $36,000*
Hotel and travel -- $36,000*
Shopping -- $24,000*
Health & Medical -- $20,000*
* Average annual revenue from Yelp
Considering that our typical local advertiser spend is $4,200** annually, that’s a pretty good ROI for these savvy businesses."

Time spent on iOS and Android connected devices


Click to enlarge

Source:  Reported on the Flurry blog, 3rd April 2013

Each iPhone 5 contains more than $1 of gold

"That iPhone in your hand isn’t just a complex piece of electronics. It’s also a gold mine — quite literally. And a platinum mine, silver mine, copper mine … you get the picture.
911 Metallurgist, which helps mines and recyclers extract precious metals from ore and, apparently, phones, has exhaustively checked the iPhones and other mobile devices. Each iPhone 5, for instance, contains $1.58 of gold, $.36 of silver, $.05 of platinum, and $.12 of copper.
Those numbers may sound small, but the phone holds from six to 300 times more precious metal than the equivalent amount of ore from a mine.
Also, in addition to the more familiar precious metals, smartphones also contain traces of huge swaths of the periodic table, particularly those “rare earths” that today’s electronics so depend on: Yttrium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Gadolinium, and Europium, among others."

People who search for mobile businesses on a mobile or tablet are more likely to buy

"Mobile searchers closer to purchase: “Local business searchers who used a mobile phone or tablet were more likely to make a purchase as a result of their search. While only 59% of PC searches resulted in a purchase, 78% of mobile phone searches and 77% of tablet searches resulted in a purchase. Tablet searchers also skew toward more expensive purchases.”"
Source:  The comScore, Neustar/Localeze and 15 Miles local search study, reported in Screenwerk, 1st April 2013
Note - It's not clear whether this means buying online, or in person in physical store

American smartphone users access Facebook 14 times a day on average

"IDC's report revealed smartphone users check into Facebook an average of 14 times a day, whether from home, on the go, in class or out with friends.
Smartphones, coupled with rich applications and mobile data services, allow us to connect with our families, friends and community from the moment we wake up until the end of our day, and it seems as though social networking site Facebook is one of the most popular places to spend time, as a Facebook-sponsored report by IT research firm IDC found.
The report revealed smartphone users check into Facebook an average of 14 times a day, whether from home, on the go, in class or out with friends. This adds up to an average of just over half an hour (32 minutes) of time spent on Facebook daily, according to IDC, which conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 18- to 44-year-old iOS and Android smartphone owners in the U.S. each day for one week in March 2013, for a total number of respondents of 7,446.
Facebook is used by 70 percent of Android phone and iPhone owners, dominates time spent communicating on the phone and drives the greatest levels of connectedness among the popular social networks, the report found. Reading one's news feed is the top activity, at 77 percent.
The report found 18- to 24-year-olds use more services on Facebook, especially directly messaging with individuals and groups and sharing pictures and videos. With the exception of reading one's news feed, every other Facebook service has higher usage levels over the weekend (Friday to Sunday).
Survey results also indicated how critical smartphones have become to society, with 63 percent of smartphone owners admitting they keep their phones with them for all but an hour of their waking day. Just under 80 percent said they keep it with them for all but two hours of their day. A quarter of all respondents couldn't recall a time in their day when their phones were not within reach or in the same room."
Source:  eWeek, 30th March 2013
Note - full report on Scribd here

28% of American mobile phone users and 48% of smartphone users used mobile banking in 2012

"A new study by the Federal Reserve Board revealed yet more strides being made in the area of mobile banking.
It found 28 per cent of all mobile phone users and 48 per cent of smartphone users had used mobile banking in the 12 months to Nov 2012. This is an increase from 21 per cent and 42 per cent respectively year on year.
The use of mobile financial services was more marked among the 10 per cent of the population that is underbanked (people with bank accounts but who use cheque cashers, payday lenders, or payroll cards).
90 per cent of these consumers have mobile phones, and 49 per cent had used mobile banking in the 12 months preceding November 2012, up from 29 per cent in December 2011.
The FRB reckons the same uptake might come next to the unbanked (those without a bank account), as 59 per cent of this group has a mobile phone, half of which are smartphones."

Friday 5 April 2013

Facebook accounts for 23% of the time people spend with apps on smartphones

Note - The original statistic is '23% of the time with apps on smartphones', not '23 percent of the time people spend on smartphones'
"Facebook occupies an interesting space in mobile. We’re not an operating system, but we’re not just an app either. Facebook accounts for 23 percent of the time people spend on smartphones. The next-biggest ones are Instagram and Google Maps, which are each at 3 percent. For the past 18 months, we spent our efforts building good versions of Facebook’s mobile apps. But the design was still very close to what we have on the desktop. We knew that we could do better."
Note - Zuckerberg doesn't detail his source, but I'm assuming that it's a global figure (as far as mobile is measured globally).  Anyone got a source?
Update - Flurry says it's 18% for connected devices in the US (first chart)
Update - I've tracked it down, and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't 100% accurate.  It's from comScore data for the US from December 2012, and it says that Facebook accounts for 23% of the time smartphone users spent with apps.  With apps.  An important distinction!

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Instagram has 100 million monthly active users (full stats)

"100 million Monthly Active Users
40 million Photos Per Day
8500 Likes Per Second
1000 Comments Per Second"
Earlier - 90m in February
Note - clearly only the top number is different...

YouTube has more than 1 billion monthly visitors (full stats)

"Viewership
More than 1 billion 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 hundreds of millions of 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 2nd April 2013
Earlier - Stats at 800m monthly users