Thursday 17 December 2015

93% of Brazilian internet users use WhatsApp

"Brazilians had complained bitterly on social media about the suspension of WhatsApp, which is a hugely popular app used by many to communicate with family, friends and colleagues both inside of Brazil and abroad.
Ninety-three per cent of the country's internet population use WhatsApp, according to the TechCrunch website, with many young and poor Brazilians taking advantage of its free text message and internet telephone service.
Within hours of the suspension being coming into force, the hashtag #Nessas48HorasEuVou (#Inthese48hoursIwill) began trending on Twitter, with Brazilians joking about all the things they would do during the suspension."
Source:  BBC News, 17th December 2015

10 Trends for 2016



Carat Global has been producing trend reports for over 5 years, looking at new technologies that will become more important and relevant to clients.

The trends for 2016 are all growing in importance, and will all have implications for clients.

This year’s trends involve two big themes:

The rise of closed, competing ecosystems

The development of artificial intelligence and actionable measurement

I hope that you find the presentation useful and informative!

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Use of wearable devices in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Mobile data volumes 2009-2014 in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Average minutes of broadcast TV watched per day 2013-4 in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

The number of apps downloaded per month in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Regular smartphone communication methods in major countries



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Time between waking and checking smartphone in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Claimed changes in watching DVDs/Blu-rays in major markets



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Use of non-broadcaster subscription VOD services in major countries



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Regular use of different media & devices in major countries



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Ownership and use of devices in major countries



Source:  Ofcom's International Communications Market Report, December 2015
Full document is here

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Online advertising grew 9.7% Y-o-Y to €16bn in Europe in H1 2015

"IAB Europe, in collaboration with IHS Technology, has today published the first ever AdEx Benchmark H1 2015 report1. The report reveals that online advertising grew 9.7% on a like-for-like basis to a value of €16bn for the first half of 2015 from €14.6bn in H1 2014 and is expected to reach almost €34bn for the full year.
The H1 2015 report reveals that CEE helped to drive the growth with a double-digit increase of 12.9% whilst the more mature markets in Western Europe also experienced a growth of 9.3%.
Display advertising now accounts for €5.6bn of all online advertising spend with a growth rate of 13.0% and indeed in Western Europe display experienced a 12.6% growth, the highest of all formats, suggesting an improvement in targeting, formats and data strategies for brand advertising.
Mobile continues to takes a more central role in consumer’s lives and 61% of European consumers now use a smartphone2. It is no surprise then that mobile display advertising spend increased 57.5% surpassing the €1bn in the first half of this year and accounting for 24% of all display advertising. Video also continues to flourish surpassing the €1bn mark as publishers develop their video monetisation strategies."

The average age of readers of the print editions of British newspapers



Source:  The Media Briefing, 14th August 2014, based on data from the newspapers' own advertising information
(More data in the full article)

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Monday 7 December 2015

The top trends on Twitter in 2015

MUSIC

1. #OneDirection
2. #GOT7
3. #NowPlaying
4. #EXO
5. #FifthHarmony
6. #방탄소년단
7. #iHeartAwards
8. #MTVEMA
9. #VMA
10. #BigBang

TV

1. #KCA
2. #TeenChoice
3. #ALDubEBTamangPanahon
4. #더쇼
5. #AMAs
6. #TheWalkingDead
7. #Empire
8. #PLL
9. #RisingStar
10. #BieberRoast

TECH

1. #iPad
2. #SoundCloud
3. #Android
4. #Periscope
5. #iPhone
6. #Amazon
7. #YouNow
8. #Apple
9. #startup
10. #Twitter

NEWS

1. #jobs
2. #Quran
3. #ISIS
4. #PrayForParis
5. #LoveWins
6. #CharlieHebdo
7. #JeSuisCharlie
8. #BlackLivesMatter
9. #地震
10. #SandraBland

POLITICS

1. #tcot
2. #LoveWins
3. #auspol
4. #leadership
5. #GOPDebate
6. #WakeUpAmerica
7. #cdnpoli
8. #UniteBlue
9. #Obama
10. #GE2015

SPORTS

1. #الاهلي
2. #MUFC
3. #LFC
4. #HalaMadrid
5. #NFL
6. #NBA
7. #CFC
8. #WWE
9. #MLB
10. #Football

PASTIMES

1. #Love
2. #Art
3. #Fashion
4. #Photography
5. #TFW
6. #Travel
7. #Selfie
8. #TBT
9. #LOL
10. #Food

STARS

1. #ArianaGrande
2. #OrianaSabatini
3. #DulceMaria
4. #PITTY
5. #DemiLovato
6. #Anitta
7. #MartinaStoessel
8. #SelenaGomez
9. #PeterLanzani
10. #PAULOCASTAGNOLI

See all the other highlights, most re-tweeted tweets and more here

Monday 30 November 2015

Black Friday 2015 & the day after generated $4.5bn in online sales in the US

"The first two days of the holiday sales period have netted $4.45 billion in U.S. online purchases, with mobile devices — led by smartphones — accounting for a record $1.5 billion of that amount, with $2.72 billion spent on BlackFriday and $1.73 billion on Thanksgiving. The figures come from Adobe, which has been tracking some 4,500 sites, including 80% of the top 100 retailers.
IBM says Black Friday outpaced that with the average basket size of $134.45, and sales up 20.7% on a year ago with popular items including Apple Watch, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, and TVs from Samsung, Sony and LG.
The number of people buying goods online and by mobile during the holiday season continues to grow, but the average value of what they are buying may be falling. IBM says that Thanksgiving online sales — amassed by way of its Benchmark survey tracking thousands of sites — overall were up 26% compared to a year ago. But the average spend per order on Thursday as $123.45. That’s down from $125.25 a year ago, and nearly $10 less than 2013, when the average basket value was $132.
Adobe said that its $2.72 billion in estimated spend online on Black Friday showed growth of 14%. Adobe had expected growth of 19%."

Mobile's share of traffic and sales in the US during Black Friday 2015



Source:  Data from IBM Watson, November 2015
Note - 9 page report here

iPhones in use in the US by model number



Source:  Apple Insider, 19th November 2015
Note - This means that there are over 60m iPhone 6 or above, that could use Apple Pay

The most popularly used emoji in US TV-related Tweets



Source:  AdWeek, 20th November 2015

The first series of the Chinese version of Top Gear has had 217m views across all platforms

"Honyee Media’s Chinese version of BBC’s Top Gear has taken the world’s most populous country by storm, with the first 5 episodes of the second season accumulating a combined audience of 217 million across TV and online.
The show, which launched on Shanghai Dragon TV on October 19th, was the number one programme in its time slot for the past 4 weeks across all cable and pay-TV channels nationwide, with an average weekly audience of 9 million tuning in to watch live. The fifth and latest episode of a run of 10 attracted its highest audience to date, garnering over 11 million viewers.
Interest in Top Gear China has been so intense that the season’s first 5 episodes have received 173 million total views across 8 of China’s largest online video websites."
Note - I'm assuming that the 217m figure is views, not viewers
Note - You can watch episodes legally on YouTube here

WeChat makes an average of $7 a year from each of its users

"The major players in Asia — WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk — have already begun driving revenue by launching apps and services on top of their messaging platforms. Almost everything a smartphone user would do inside a native app can now be done inside a messaging app: gaming, ordering taxis, sending and receiving money, listening to music, watching TV, buying goods online, and so on.
Average revenue per user is very high for messengers that offer these platform layers: $7.00 for WeChat, $4.24 for KakaoTalk, and $3.16 for LINE. The main drivers of revenue are games and, for KakaoTalk, e-commerce. By comparison, WhatsApp makes $0.06 per user, and this money comes exclusively from subscriber fees. The upside of introducing platform layers is quantified, and now that Facebook Messenger has launched a nascent app store and virtual assistant ‘M’ inside its service, the messaging landscape seems to have found its revenue roadmap."

Thursday 26 November 2015

Smart devices - phones and tablets - per head in Europe


"Flurry from Yahoo currently tracks over 725,000 apps across 564 million devices in Europe. All Europeans love their smart devices, but there are marked differences in usage and preferences across the continent. Let’s take a look.
For this analysis, we focused on the top 10 European countries by total population: Russia, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, and Sweden. We next compared the total population and Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of these countries, to the number of iOS and Android devices Flurry Analytics tracked in each of these countries throughout October 2015. GNI is a measure of a country’s wealth, as calculated by the World Bank in constant US dollars."

Digital, Social & Mobile in Southeast Asia 2015


Wednesday 25 November 2015

Mail Online has a global staff of 720, inc 420 editorial staff

"Mail Online employs a total global staff of 720, including 410 editorial staff. Of those, 200 are based in the US, 130 of them are editorial."
Source:  The Guardian, 25th November 2015

Smartphone and feature phone ownership among British kids


Source:  Ofcom's Childrens & Parents Report, 20th November 2015

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Adele sold over 2.3m copies of '25' in the US in the first 3 days

"It’s confirmed. Adele’s 25 has broken the single-week U.S. album sales record, according to Nielsen Music.
After processing the first sales reports from Monday, Nov. 23, the album has already sold at least 2,433,000 in pure album sales in slightly more than three days. That sum beats the single-week record for an album since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991, set by *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, when it debuted with 2,416,000 in the week ending March 26, 2000.
Adele's '25' Is the 20th Album to Sell a Million Copies in a Week: See the Full List
Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. Prior to 1991, there was no authoritative music sales tracking service in the U.S. and thus, it was mostly unknown how many copies of an album or song/single were sold in a single week.
25 was released on Nov. 20 through XL/Columbia Records. Yesterday (Nov. 23), Nielsen reported that 25 had sold at least 2.3 million copies in its first three days of release (through Nov. 22)."

Time spent with media per day in India



Source:  Data from TNS, reported by Next Big What, 20th November 2015

Kids' media use in the UK 2005-2015



Source:  Ofcom's Children & Parents: Media use & attitudes report 2015, 20th November 2015

Monday 16 November 2015

British record labels 'make more money from vinyl than they do from YouTube'

"The boss of British music industry body the BPI has claimed UK labels make less money from YouTube than from vinyl sales.
Speaking at the Music Futures conference in Gateshead, Geoff Taylor said vinyl revenues were worth more than the “14bn music streams on YouTube” in 2014.
Although he did not give a specific figure, last year the BPI said that in 2013, British labels’ income from sales of vinyl albums was £12.1m. In 2014, more than 1.3m vinyl albums were sold in the UK, but the BPI has not published a figure for how much income that meant for labels.
In response to Taylor’s comments, a YouTube spokesperson said: “Music videos on YouTube can be discovered by over 1 billion people in over 80 countries. To date, we’ve paid out $3bn to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year.”
The company also cited its YouTube for Artists site that provides musicians with analytics and advice on building their audiences. YouTube has also just launched a standalone YouTube Music app in the US, which ties into its new YouTube Red $9.99-a-month subscription service."

Friday 13 November 2015

Over 1m households in Australia subscribe to Netflix

“There are now 2,677,000 Australians (14+) who have Netflix in the home, with the number of households with a Netflix subscription rising again in October to 1,039,000 (11.4 per cent),  subscription VoD data from Roy Morgan Research shows.
For the majority of Netflix subscribers, this is their first time paying for TV. In the year preceding the arrival of Netflix, over seven in 10 Australians lived in a home without any paid TV service; as of October, this had declined to 58 per cent.
According to the research firm, the rise of SVoD, dominated by Netflix, is perhaps impacting Australians’ DVD and downloading habits. In the six months to September 2015, fewer Australians have been buying or renting DVDs or downloading TV shows or movies.
[…]
Australians have been notorious for their high levels of illegal downloading. While our figures of course include legal downloads, it is notable that the younger, tech-savvy people most likely to download TV shows and movies have been the quickest to subscribe to Netflix—and the overall rate of downloading has declined.
A year ago, just over one in five 14-24 year-olds downloaded TV shows or movies in an average month—today, around 22 per cent of this group lives in a Netflix home, and the rate of downloading has fallen sharply to 15 per cent.”
Note - Netflix only launched in Australia in March 2015

Thursday 12 November 2015

Call of Duty®: Black Ops III generated revenue of $550m in the first 3 days

"Activision Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI), today confirmed that Call of Duty®: Black Ops III is the biggest entertainment launch of the year. In its first three days, the blockbuster title exceeded $550 million in sell-through worldwide, according to Activision estimates. The opening weekend haul is the biggest entertainment launch of 2015, including theatrical box office, music and book launches.
Engagement per player also set a new record for the Call of Duty® franchise. Additionally, fans played more than 75 million hours online in its opening three days.
"Call of Duty's millions of passionate fans have shown us, yet again, the strength of their commitment to this enduring franchise," said Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard's Chief Executive Officer. "Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the biggest entertainment launch this year in any medium, and bigger than any theatrical opening weekend ever."
"The Call of Duty: Black Ops III launch is bigger than any game, any movie, or any entertainment launch this year. But more importantly, our fans are engaging more deeply with the franchise than ever before. In fact, so far, people are playing Black Ops III for more hours per player than any Call of Duty game on record," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. "Call of Duty is more than a game, it's a year round passion for a growing base of millions of fans and it's only gaining momentum.""

Shoppers spent $14.3bn on Alibaba on Singles Day 2015

"China’s online shopping holiday “Singles’ Day” broke all previous records when it wrapped up at midnight last night (Nov. 11) in Beijing—Chinese shoppers bought $14.3 billion of merchandise through e-commerce giant Alibaba alone, and that figure doesn’t include billions more on competing websites.
That $14.3 billion figure blew through expectations, and beat last year’s number by 60%:
[...]
[This] shows the raw power of China’s consumers, who purchased over $450 billion in merchandise online in all of 2014, a figure expected to more than double to over $1 trillion by 2018."
Source:  Quartz, 12th November 2015

Wednesday 11 November 2015

18% of British internet users use ad blockers

"The latest wave of the Internet Advertising Bureau UK’s Ad Blocking Report, conducted online by YouGov, reveals that 18% of British adults online are currently using ad blocking software. This is a rise from 15% in early June.
Ad blocking is more prevalent among men surveyed (23%) than women (13%) and the propensity to block ads decreases with age – from 35% of 18-24 year olds to 13% of people 55+.
40%’s main motivation isn’t to block all ads
However, less than six in 10 (57%) people who’ve ever downloaded the software said their main motivation was to block all ads; 20% said the main reason was to block certain types of ads or ads from certain websites.
Less interference and fewer ads main ways to stop ad blocking
The most common reason people would be less likely to block ads is if they didn’t interfere with what they were doing (cited by 48%) followed by having fewer ads on a page (36%). One in seven (14%) would be less likely to block ads if they were more relevant.
“The small rise in people blocking ads is not unexpected considering the publicity it’s been receiving,” said IAB UK’s CEO, Guy Phillipson. “However, it does provide some perspective on the situation for those referring to an “adblockalypse.” More importantly, it also provides a clear message to the industry – a less invasive, lighter ad experience is absolutely vital to address the main cause of ad blocking. That’s why we're developing the L.E.A.N advertising principles for the online advertising supply chain."
Majority still prefer free content and ads vs having to pay
When told that ad blocking means some websites will have to stop providing free content or charge people to use them, 61% of British adults online said they would prefer to access content for free and see ads than pay to access content.
Phillipson explains: “The other key tactic to reduce ad blocking is making consumers more aware of the consequences – what we call the “value exchange.” If more people realise content is only free because ads pay for it, then fewer people will be inclined to block ads. Only 4% are willing to face the other option – paying for content with no ads.”
Among those currently using ad blocking software, 71% are doing so on laptops, 47% on desktop PCs. Just under a quarter (23%) are blocking ads on mobiles and less than one in five (19%) on tablets."

Monday 9 November 2015

More than 6bn videos a day are watched on Snapchat

"Snapchat is generating 6 billion video views on its app every day, according to the Financial Times.
That number has tripled since May, the FT's Tim Bradshaw reported, citing people close to the company.
Snapchat confirmed the view count, but declined further comment, according to the report. Business Insider has also contacted Snapchat for comment and we'll update this article if we hear back.
In September, International Business Times reported Snapchat was drawing in 4 billion video views a day.
The new 6 billion figure means Snapchat is rapidly closing the gap with Facebook, which last week said it had doubled its number of daily video views to 8 billion, up from 4 billion in April.
What makes Snapchat's number even more impressive is that it attracts around 100 million daily active users to its app, compared to Facebook's 1 billion daily active user count. Facebook's numbers also include both desktop and mobile views, while Snapchat is a mobile-only service."

Just Eat gets over 700,000 visits a day in the UK, and is used by 10% of adults

"Online takeaway business Just Eat’s chief operating officer Adrian Blair has argued that major brands will benefit enormously from working with it. So far, the company has focused on building a network of 59,000 independent restaurants. Writing for Propel Friday Opinion, he stated: “Just Eat gets over 700,000 visits a day to our apps and website in the UK alone (about 10x the footfall at Westfield London). It is essentially a busy digital high street, exclusively for restaurants. The vast majority of these visits occur at dinner time. In other words, people are not researching a future purchase – they are hungry and choosing what to eat right now. Only brands visible on the Just Eat digital high street are part of the consideration set for these consumers – and many of those that do feature find it their largest source of new customers. Just Eat is now a mainstream consumer brand, used by one in ten adults in the UK. Contrary to the perception of some, they are not “downmarket” – over half of Just Eat users are A / B / C1s. People from social grade A (“high managerial or professional”) alone spend over £200m on Just Eat each year. 80% of target consumers see us as a mass market consumer brand, and brand affinity is one of the main reasons people use the service."

Thursday 5 November 2015

Mobile accounts for 78% of Facebook's ad revenue

"Third Quarter 2015 Operational Highlights
Daily active users (DAUs) - DAUs were 1.01 billion on average for September 2015, an increase of 17% year-over-year.
Mobile DAUs - Mobile DAUs were 894 million on average for September 2015, an increase of 27% year-over-year.
Monthly active users (MAUs) - MAUs were 1.55 billion as of September 30, 2015, an increase of 14% year-over-year.
Mobile MAUs - Mobile MAUs were 1.39 billion as of September 30, 2015, an increase of 23% year-over-year.
Third Quarter 2015 Other Financial Highlights
Mobile advertising revenue - Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 78% of advertising revenue for the third quarter of 2015, up from 66% of advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2014.
Capital expenditures - Capital expenditures for the third quarter of 2015 were $780 million.
Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities - Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $15.83 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2015.
Free cash flow - Free cash flow for the third quarter of 2015 was $1.41 billion."
Source:  Facebook Q3 2015 Results, released 4th November 2015
Note - Full charts deck here

Over $2bn has been pledged on Kickstarter



Source:  Kickstarter, November 2015
(Lots more stats if you click on the link)

Facebook generates 8 billion video views a day

"Facebook video viewership is growing by leaps and bounds. It now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. That’s up from just 4 billion video views per day in April. Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on the call to investors following Facebook’s blockbuster Q3 2015 earnings report.
Some might contend that this stat isn’t totally accurate since Facebook counts just 3 seconds of watching as a “view”. But the 100% growth in seven months shows that even when controlling for this limitation of the metric, users are still voraciously consuming videos.
Even at just 3 seconds per view, Facebook is generating 760 years of watch time each day. That means there’s a ton of space for Facebook to lure in TV commercial dollars that are shifting to digital. It also has an opportunity to grow viewership further with an ongoing test where it pays a revenue share to top video creators."
Source:  Techcrunch, 4th November 2015

Wednesday 4 November 2015

US Netflix subscribers watch an average of 10 episodes & 4 movies a week

"Regular (monthly) Netflix users in the US have grown even more dependent on the service for viewing TV programming, saying they watch 10 shows per week via the platform – as well as four movies during the same timeframe. For TV content, this represents a doubling of the level (five shows per week) found in the same survey three years ago.
Projected to the full population, this means that the average US consumer ages 13 to 54 watches roughly five TV shows and two movies per week via Netflix using one or more platforms.
The findings come from Over the Top TV 2015: A Complete Video Landscape– the latest study in market and consumer information source GfK’s ongoing The Home Technology Monitor series tracking media technology and services. The new report includes trends from five prior OTT studies conducted since 2010."

Chinese smartphone users change their phone every 18 months

"Researches show that Chinese smartphone users change their smartphones once every 29-months in 2011, but the period has been shorted to 18 months now. Over 20% of Chinese users will update for a newer phone within one year, while only 8.4% would do so within two years."

The average WeChat user reads 7 articles a day in the app



Source:  Data from Tencent, from a presentation by China channel, 24th October 2015
Note 1 - This is equivalent to a novel a month according to another slide in the presention
Note 2 - Lots more stats in the full pres - click on the link

Adele's 'Hello' is the first song to sell more than 1m downloads in a week in the US

"Adele’s ‘Hello’ has just sold 1.11 million downloads in one week, the first time any song has sold more than a million downloads in seven days or less.  The data comes from Nielsen, with a large bulk of the downloads coming from the iTunes Store and Amazon.
Adele is utterly crushing the record books on this one.  Previously, the closest anyone has ever come to hitting one million in a week is Flo Rida, whose ‘Right Round’ sold 636,000 downloads during its debut week back in 2009.  Adding to Adele’s accomplishment is the continued slide in overall song download sales, which are quickly losing ground as music fans shift to streaming music platforms like Spotify and YouTube."

Paypal's Venmo app processed $2.1bn in payments in Q3 2015

"PayPal’s aim is not only to grow its customer base, but to create deeper, more relevant relationships with each of its customers. In the third quarter, the company processed 1.22 billion payment transactions, which translates to 27 payment transactions per active customer account. This is an increase from 24 payment transactions per active customer account in the same period last year. $2.1 billion of volume was processed through the Venmo product, growing over 200%, making it one of the fastest growing apps in the world by dollar volume."

Thursday 29 October 2015

40m people have used the Apple News app

"Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple News usage numbers for the first time during today's fourth quarter earnings call, announcing the service has approximately 40 million users.
Cook did not specify whether that number represented people who use the Apple News app on a regular basis or if it simply measured the number of people who have accessed the app at one point or another, so it's still difficult to gauge the popularity of Apple News."
Note - I'm very, very, very convinced that 40m is the 'ever used' number...

Google receives 3.5bn daily searches, Facebook receives 1.5bn

"Each day, Facebook handles 1.5 billion searches against the 2 trillion posts in its index. They’re still a ways off from Google’s 3.5 billion daily searches, but it’s an impressive figure nonetheless and puts Facebook right up there as far as search giants go.
Of course, Facebook is only indexing content within its own ecosystem, while Google, Bing, Yahoo and the like make much of the web’s content available to searchers."
Facebook stat - Facebook, 22nd Oct 2015

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Twitter has 320m active users

"Third Quarter 2015 Operational and Product Highlights
Monthly Active Users – Total average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 320 million for the third quarter, up 11% year-over-year, and compared to 316 million in the previous quarter. Excluding SMS Fast Followers, MAUs  were 307 million for the third quarter, up 8% year-over-year, and compared to 304 million in the previous quarter. Mobile MAUs represented approximately 80% of total MAUs."
MAUs

Apple shipped 48m iPhones and 10m iPads in its Q4 2015



Source:  Apple financial docs, published 27th October 2015
Units are in thousands, revenues in millions
Note that Apple's Q4 2015 ended 26th Sept 2015

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Indian ecommerce site Flipkart sold $200m worth of mobile phones in its 5 day Big Billion Days sale

"Flipkart, the country's largest online retailer and marketplace, sold more than $200 million worth of mobile phones during the five-day Big Billion Days sale, with most consumers demanding 4G-backed devices, a top executive said.
Mobile phones made up two-thirds of the $300 million worth of products purchased by consumers during the sale, which started on October 13. Flipkart sold 250 mobile phones every minute, of which 190 were 4G phones, during the five days, chief business officer said.
"Today, three of four phones, which we sell on Flipkart are 4G phones," said Nagori. "About 80 per cent of sale of mobile phones that happened during Big Billion Days were actually 4G phones. Overall, 80 per cent of the phones sold would be under Rs 10,000 range." "

Smart TV ownership in broadband homes in Europe



Source:  Parks Associates, 20th October 2015

About 3m people a day look at Cosmopolitan's channel on Snapchat Discover

"Most millennials probably don’t know who Helen Gurley Brown is, but the Cosmopolitan brand Brown built is resonating with the young set — on Snapchat, at least.
Cosmopolitan says it’s averaging 3 million viewers a day on Snapchat Discover, a milestone that could appeal to some advertisers who wonder whether these media channels on the messaging app are desirable places to run their spots. Cosmo, which has been a Discover partner since the service launched in January, has seen traffic go from about 1.8 million a day to 3 million viewers since the summer, according to Kate Lewis, vp and editorial director of digital at Hearst Magazines, which owns Cosmo.
When asked whether the app is worth the editorial effort, she replied: “Oh my god yes. It’s been amazing, and we have about 3 million people a day on the Discover platform.”"

Trust in advertising in the US by demographic and format



Source:  Research by Nielsen, reported in a press release, 13th October 2015

Adele's 'Hello' received 23.2m views in 24 hours on YouTube

"The Adele video, released on Friday, surpassed 23.2 million views within the first 24 hours on YouTube.  That edges out Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood,” which reached 20.1 million within its first 24.  Other first-day heavy hitters include ‘Anaconda’ by Nicki Minaj, which cleared 19.6 million on day one.
‘Hello,’ released on YouTube subset Vevo, has already surpassed 70 million views as of Monday morning.  Incidentally, the track is also available on Spotify, and early Nielsen data suggests a record-breaking iTunes download figure as well.  Looking ahead, it remains unclear if Adele’s upcoming album, 25, due in November, will be serviced to Spotify or other streaming services.  In the case of Apple Music, a hand-in-glove relationship with streaming and downloads could complicate any withholding strategy."

Thursday 22 October 2015

US digital ad spend rose 19% to $27.5bn in H1 2015

"Internet ad revenues in the United States reached a landmark high of $27.5 billion in the first half of 2015, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC US. This marks a 19 percent rise over the $23.1 billion in ad revenues for the first-half of 2014.
Accelerating the pace of already impressive growth in the half-year, 2015’s second quarter internet ad revenues rose by 22.5 percent to $14.3 billion, up from $11.7 billion in Q2 2014. This also reflects 8.5 percent growth from the first quarter of 2015.
Other highlights from the report include:
Mobile revenues climbed to $8.2 billion in HY 2015, up 54% from $5.3 billion reported at HY 2014
Mobile now represents 30% of the revenues generated by the entire internet advertising marketplace, up from 23% at HY 2014
Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, reached $2 billion in the first half of 2015, a 35% year-over-year jump from $1.5 billion in the first half of 2014
Search revenues in the first half of 2015 reached double digits, surpassing $10 billion, marking an 11% increase over the $9 billion in revenues achieved during the same period in 2014
Social media revenues – which encompass advertising delivered on social platforms including social networking, and social gaming websites and apps – reached $4.4 billion in HY 2015, a 51% hike over the same period in 2014, at $2.9 billion
The same top three advertising verticals continue to account for nearly half of advertising revenue (48%), including retail (22%), financial services (13%), and automotive (13%)
Display-related advertising revenues in the first half of 2015 totaled $6.8 billion, a 5% uptick from $6.5 billion in the first half of 2014, and accounted for 25% of digital advertising revenue overall
“Advertisers are more committed than ever to connect with audiences on digital screens,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Content is key to winning consumer attention – on mobile, in digital video, on desktop, and more – throughout the day."
“We’re witnessing a seismic shift in consumer behavior to the always-on, connected consumer,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US. “As a result, we’ve seen social continue to fuel the growth of digital, particularly with respect to mobile and video.”
"Internet ad revenue growth is being driven further than ever before, as advertisers continue to invest in new ways to reach consumers," said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement, IAB.  "Audiences have rapidly altered their media and purchasing habits and made digital media and mobile devices an integral part of their lives."
Note - Click on the link to see tables etc

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Apple Music has 6.5m paying subscribers

"Apple Inc. said it has 15 million users on its streaming-music service, including 6.5 million paying subscribers.
Speaking at WSJDLive, The Wall Street Journal’s global technology conference, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company has 6.5 million paying customers for Apple Music and 8.5 million customers on three-month trials.
Apple launched Apple Music on June 30 and offered every user a three-month trial period. After the trial period, users pay $9.99 a month for individual subscriptions or $14.99 for families. The first batch of customers came off the trial period at the end of September."
Source;  WSJ, 20th October 2015

Thursday 15 October 2015

Social media use in the US, 2005-2015



Lots more charts in the full report
Source:  Report by Pew Internet & American Life Project, 8th October 2015
Full report here

TV is the dominant video viewing platform for millennials in the US

"TV remains the dominant video platform across all demographics, even millennials, according to a report from the Video Advertising Bureau.
The study revealed that a full 80% of millennials say that their video time is spent with TV. And further, watching live TV, as opposed to video-on-demand (VOD), comprises the bulk of viewing.
"One of the most common myths we hear in the marketplace is [that] millennials don't watch TV," the report noted. "This multiscreen insight report takes a deep dive into the video landscape with a specific look at young adults 18-34. We will let the numbers speak for themselves but there is no denying millennials love premium, multiscreen video content."
At the same time, the migration of video viewers from computer to smartphone has accelerated, with 8% less consumers watching video on computer (persons over the age of 18) than they were last year. Meanwhile there been a 16% increase in smartphone video consumption. Also, 45% of people over 18 say that smartphone video garners more time spent.
App usage has also reached its highest level to date, averaging 176 million users over the age of two, monthly. Multimedia device penetration and usage now stands at over 61 million people 2+, with time spent with multimedia devices is highest among millennials."
Source:  Data from the VAB, reported by Rapid TV News, 14th October 2015
Full presentation here

Netflix has over 69m members

"Global membership grew 3.62 million to 69.17 million members compared to prior year growth of 3.02 million, and a forecast of 3.55 million. Operating income was $74 million, compared to prior year of $110 million and a forecast of $81 million. Seven quarters ago we moved to providing you our internal forecast for the quarter ahead. We strive for accuracy in this projection and, when it comes to global net additions, Q3 was our most accurate to date: we were within 2% (3.62 vs. 3.55) and within 10% on operating income ($74m vs. $81m).
While global growth was as we expected, our forecast was high for the US and low for international.
We added 0.88 million new US members in the quarter compared to 0.98 million prior year and a forecast of 1.15 million. Our over-forecast in the US for Q3 was due to slightly higher-than-expected involuntary churn (inability to collect), which we believe was driven in part by the ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards. In terms of US net additions, through the first nine months of 2015, we are slightly ahead of prior year, and we expect to finish 2015 at about 2014 levels. This would mark the 4th consecutive year we’ve added about 6 million members in the US.
[...]
International net add growth totaled 2.74 million compared to 2.04 million in the prior year and a 2.40 million forecast."
Source:  Netflix Results email to shareholders, 14th October 2015

Monday 12 October 2015

Children who play video games more frequently achieve lower academic results

Headline Findings:
"- Access to a computer/laptop at home is not an issue for the vast majority of young people with at
least 95% reporting having access. However, despite the fact that only 5% report not having access
to a computer or laptop, when scaled up across the top 40 schools in terms of deprivation, c.1,000
young people are potentially without access, placing them at significant disadvantage.
- Young people spend a significant amount of time online each day with one-third of young people
spending four hours or more online in Year 1 rising to 40% in Year 2 of the study.
- Social networking and gaming were identified by parents/carers and teachers as activities that
could most negatively impact on young people’s attainment. Findings from this research confirm
a link between extent of gaming and GCSE attainment, e.g. only two-fifths (41%) of pupils who
reported using a portable games player a couple of times a day achieved 5A*-C GCSE grades
compared to over three-quarters (77%) of those who reported rarely using one. No relationship
was observed in terms of social networking.
- School staff were particularly concerned about extent of gaming, reporting a number of issues
relating to attendance, punctuality and motivation. Particular issues identified in relation to male
pupils with gaming addiction noted in some instances.
- Internet safety is a particular concern for schools and parents/carers however young people
themselves appeared more comfortable with their own safety online."

Friday 9 October 2015

Dollar Shave Club has 2.2m subscribers

"You remember Dollar Shave Club, don’t you? The company’s first ads, which called for simplicity and emancipation from razors with “a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back scratcher, and 10 blades” were actually funny enough to go viral over the past few years. The first of them has been viewed more than 19 million times on YouTube.
Well, that upstart company is now claiming to have overtaken Schick as the second-best selling razor cartridge in the U.S., though as a private company the numbers haven’t been independently confirmed.
Unlike razor giants Schick and Gillette, Dollar Shave Club uses a subscription model. The company currently claims to have 2.2 million subscribers who receive either four or five razors per month, depending on the plan."

Thursday 8 October 2015

UK digital ad spend rose to £3.98bn in the first half of 2015

"Total digital ad spend grows 13.4% to touch £4bn in first half of 2015 whilst mobile spend is up 51%, accounting for nearly 80% of the rise in digital ad revenues. This is despite challenges from ad blocking.
Advertisers spent a record £3.98 billion on digital advertising in the first half of 2015 – up 13.4%¹ year-on-year – according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK Digital Adspend report, conducted by PwC.
Display advertising revenues grew at more than twice the overall digital rate (27.5%) to hit £1.31 billion – 33% of total digital ad spend, its largest-ever share. Within display, video ad spend grew 56% to £292 million – accounting for 22% of display revenue. Social media spend rose 51% to £574 million while native/content² grew 50% to £325 million – accounting for 25% of display revenue. Tablet-dedicated³ ad spend grew 115% to £68 million.
[...]
Mobile ad spend up 51%; accounts for nearly 80% of the rise in digital ad revenues
Ad spend on mobiles increased 51% to £1.08 billion in the first half of 2015. The actual increase of £370 million year-on-year accounts for 79% of the rise in digital ad revenues.
Over a quarter (27%) of all digital advertising spend now comes from mobile, compared to 20% a year earlier. Mobile accounts for 39% of display spend, 43% of video spend, 63% of social media spend and 74% of native/content ad spend.
“Mobile is unquestionably the engine of digital growth, with mobile display spend up 63% on the back of mobile video spend more than doubling,” says Dan Bunyan, Senior Manager at PwC. “However, there’s plenty of room to grow, as mobile accounts for 40% of internet time⁴ but only 27% of ad spend. Marketers are realising this is out-of-kilter, hence mobile is likely to continue gaining share at pace.”
Travel/transport overtakes consumer goods as biggest display advertiser
The biggest spending sector on display ads in the first half of 2015 was travel/transport (16.8% share) – overtaking consumer goods (16.1%). Finance was third (13.4%), just ahead of retail (13.3%).
Paid-for search marketing increased 8.4% to £2.07 billion in the first half of 2015. Classifieds including recruitment, property and automotive listings, grew 6.6% to £547 million – accounting for 14% of digital ad spend.
 ¹All growth rates except video and social media advertising are a like-for-like basis, i.e. only companies that submitted in H1 2014 and H1 2015 have been included in year-on-year growth calculations.
²Content marketing = paid for sponsorship, advertisement features, in-feed & native distribution tools.
³Tablet-specific advertising only (i.e. not including internet advertising displayed on a tablet by default).
⁴IAB/UKOM/comScore: Digital Time Spent Study (H1 2015)"
Source:  Press release from the IAB (UK), 7th October 2015

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Android has 1.4bn active users

"Google’s mobile platform now has 1.4 billion 30-day active users globally. Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the new Android-related data point at its Nexus event in San Francisco today.
At its developer event in June 2014, Google announced it had hit more than 1 billion monthly active users on the Android platform. Prior to that, Mountain View had released cumulative figures for Android activations — announcing it had hit 900 million activations in June 2013, when it was adding some 1.5 million new devices per month, and passing the 1 billion activated Androids mark by September 2013.
This summer analyst Gartner’s latest smartphone market figures recorded the slowest ever year-over-year growth for Android — suggesting Google’s mobile platform has hit peak penetration, taking around 82 percent of the global smartphone market in Q2 this year.
However Pichai talked up Android’s growth in emerging markets, saying usage has “literally doubled” in certain markets over the last year — name-checking Indonesia and Vietnam."
MAUs

China has 946m mobile web users

"How big is China’s mobile web? So big that it’s genuinely hard to comprehend. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China is closing in on the one billion mobile web user mark.
Specifically, MIIT says that there are 946 million mobile web users in China. The vast majority of them, more than 900 million, are accessing the web via mobile phones (as opposed to tablets or other mobile devices). And more of those mobile users are accessing the web via 4G, too: China has hit 270 million total 4G users."
Source:  Data on August 2015 from CNNIC, reported by Tech in Asia, 24th September 2015

Facebook has 2.5m advertisers

"In June of 2013, Facebook formally announced that it had 1 million advertisers. Then, in February of this year, the company announced 2 million advertisers. And last night, it said it now had 2.5 million.
Advertiser growth is clearly accelerating.
It would be interesting to know how many advertisers Google currently has. Financial analysts have estimated that Google has approximately 4 million advertisers today.
A substantial though undisclosed percentage of Facebook’s advertisers are small businesses. The company previously said it has 45 million active small business pages globally. It’s trying to covert more of those active Page owners into advertisers.
As part of the 2.5-million announcement, Facebook is introducing new products and tools directed at mobile marketers. The company reported in the second quarter that mobile advertising accounted for 76 percent of total ad revenues."
Source:  Marketingland, 28th September 2015

Kids influence family purchase decisions

"Kids have a lot of influence. Almost all children participate in decision-making processes about purchases. Across categories, parents take their kids’ opinions very seriously. The areas where kids have the most influence are toys (88%), fashion (79%) and places to go (79%). Additionally, 54% of parents say their kids always or often accompany them to the grocery store.
Parent-child relationships are very close. Two-thirds of parents claim to be closer to their kids than their parents were to them, illustrating how much parents trust their children today. Additionally, 9 out of 10 parents say they frequently ask their child’s opinions about purchases, and 4 in 10 confirm that their children are more knowledgeable than them about several product areas (especially toys and gaming).
Kids have the word. Children 6 to 13 often initiate conversations about products, with nearly 90% asking their parents about new things they’ve heard of. Parents listen, too–two-thirds say their children influence them strongly on what to buy.
Kids have money to spend. With 6 in 10 Northern European children getting pocket money, their spending power is significant—adding up to more than 3 billion Euros per year across the six markets in this study.
TV is most relevant. Apart from conversations with parents and friends, TV ads are most central to kids’ discovery of new products. Not only do 80% of kids get ideas about what they want from them, 81% tell their parents about cool TV ads they’ve seen. Kids’ high-level use of laptops, tablets and smartphones demonstrates the importance of multi-platform targeting for advertisers."
Source:  Research on Northern Europe by Viacom, reported on their blog, 25th September 2015

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Axel Springer paid $343m for 88% of Business Insider

"German publisher Axel Springer, which lost out to Japan's Nikkei in the race to buy the Financial Times two months ago, is paying $343 million for 88% of the online publication.
Axel Springer already owned a stake of about 9%. Tuesday's deal values the eight-year-old Business Insider at $442 million, one of the highest sums ever for a standalone digital publisher.
Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) CEO Jeff Bezos, who invested in the startup several years ago, will retain a small stake. Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
Axel Springer is a publishing giant in Europe, with holdings including the tabloid Bild and the newspaper Die Welt. It has been on the hunt for online properties."
Source:  CNN, 29th September 2015

More than 70 companies pay to let their ads be classified 'acceptable' by Adblock Pro

"After Marco Arment abruptly removed Peace, the first top-selling iOS 9 ad blocker, from the App Store, another app called Crystal has risen in its place. In fact, Crystal is now the number one paid app on Apple's mobile platform. The Wall Street Journal says reports that developer Dean Murphy has already earned around $75,000 (leaving out Apple's chunk) from sales of the 99 cent app. Not bad — but apparently it's also not enough. The Journal's piece also reveals that Murphy has entered into an agreement with Adblock Pro maker Eyeo GmbH that will allow other companies to pay so that their ads get through Crystal's filter.
Eyeo says its "acceptable ads" policy prohibits anything from being too intrusive or annoying. But over 70 companies (including Google and Microsoft) are already paying to be let through ad blocker technology — and there's potential for way more; Eyeo told the Journal that over 700 companies have ads that meet its criteria."
Source:  The Verge, 24th September 2015

The AA in the UK attends 17,000 warning light-related calls-outs a month

"Hundreds of thousands of cars will find new owners over the next two months but the joy of a replacement vehicle can be cut short when an unfamiliar warning light appears.
Help is now just a fingertip away with the AA app, which can help drivers identify warning light symbols and take appropriate action.
The AA alone averages around 17,000 warning light-related call-outs a month – including more than 4,600 red lights – which peaks when people change vehicle in the weeks following the new car registrations in March and September.
New car registrations trigger dashboard warning light confusion
AA attends 17,000 warning light-related call-outs a month
More men just turn ignition off and on and hope for best
Women more likely to phone a friend
More than 1 in 8 don’t have handbook in car
AA app has warning light information to help drivers"

33% of Buzzfeed's traffic comes from Facebook & 21% from Snapchat

"For starters, don’t think of BuzzFeed as a publisher of a single website that has great social media chops. It’s a “fully integrated social platform” whose Snapchat and Instagram channels are as important as — if not more important than — its natively hosted stuff. Want proof? Peretti read aloud BuzzFeed’s traffic proportions on the show:
23 percent: Direct to the site or apps
14 percent: YouTube views
2 percent: Google search to the site
6 percent: Facebook traffic to the site
27 percent: Facebook native video
4 percent: Images on Facebook
21 percent: Snapchat content views
3 percent: Other distributed platforms"

Pinterest has 100m active users

"Pinterest said on Wednesday that it had surpassed 100 million monthly active members, in a milestone for the digital scrapbooking start-up, which has faced scrutiny over whether the size of its user base and business growth can justify its huge valuation.
The company, based in San Francisco, has grown rapidly in the last five years, amassing a war chest from top venture capital investors and strategic partners, and gaining a valuation of $11 billion in the process. Pinterest’s highly visual interface — it is akin to a digital corkboard for saving pictures of places to visit and recipes to try — has influenced many other companies to make similar design decisions and rethink the importance of photos over text."
Source:  New York Times, 17th September 2015
MAUs

Over 16m events per month are created on Facebook

"Luckily, many ticketing and social media platforms provide APIs, or feeds for events, where companies can aggregate a large event database. Last year Live Nation promoted 22,000 events, Brown Paper Tickets promoted 200,000, Eventbrite promoted 1.7M, and Meetup promoted 6.6M. Facebook reported that it was creating 16M events each month in 2014 and now has 450M monthly active users of Facebook events. Today, Facebook does not have a strong event discovery solution."

comScore's 2015 US Mobile App Report


Apple sold 13m iPhone 6s & iPhone 6s Pluses in the first 3 days

"Apple® today announced it has sold more than 13 million new iPhone® 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, a new record, just three days after launch. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in more than 40 additional countries beginning October 9 including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. The new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year.
“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”"

Monday 28 September 2015

Instagram has 400m monthly active users

"We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong. While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us.
Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.
Instagrammers continue to capture incredible photos and videos from all corners of the earth (and even the solar system). We’ve seen inspiring moments like the first surface image of Pluto and Champions League celebrations, as well as striking locales like the white pools of Turkey and a Namibian desert ghost town. These are just a few of the more than 80 million photos per day shared on Instagram.
Also, a few notable names have joined Instagram in the last 100 million. The most followed accounts include David Beckham from the UK, Caitlyn Jenner from the US, Indonesia’s Raffi and Nagita, German soccer player Toni Kroos and South Korea’s T.O.P.
When Instagram launched nearly five years ago, 400 million seemed like a distant dream. Now, we continue to strive to improve Instagram — helping you experience the world through images and connect with others through shared passions."
Source:  Blog post from Instagram, 22nd September 2015
Earlier - 300m announced on 10th December 2014, 200m announced on 23rd March 2014
Maus

Friday 25 September 2015

American smartphone users spend 80% of their app time with just 3 apps

"Time spent in smartphone apps continues to grow, according to comScore’s latest US mobile app report. Americans spent almost 70 hours in smartphone apps, on average, in June (excluding the web browser). Younger users, aged 18- 24, spent more than 90 hours. More apps are also reaching larger audiences: 60 apps had more than 10 million unique visitors in June, up from 44 a year ago, according to comScore.
But attention is still largely concentrated among a user’s top few apps. The average American spends 50% of their app time in their most-used app, and almost 80% in their top three apps, according to comScore.
The big winner, unsurprisingly, is Facebook. It’s a top-three app for almost 80% of users, according to comScore, and number one for almost half of them. (With 126 million US unique visitors in June, it’s the most popular app in the US by a solid margin. It’s also on almost half of users’ smartphone homescreens, according to the report.) And as Facebook goes deeper into mobile video, its share of time spent seems likely to increase."

Monday 14 September 2015

17m people stayed in Airbnb accommodation in summer 2015



"Five years ago, in the summer of 2010, roughly 47,000 people stayed with Airbnb hosts. This summer, nearly 17 million total guests stayed with Airbnb hosts around the world. That means that in the last five years, summer travel on Airbnb has grown 353 times over."
Source:  Airbnb's Summer Report, September 2015
Note - 'Summer' means 'end of May to early September'


Only 2 of Amazon's 20 all-time best-selling were published before the Kindle was launched

"The importance of e-books to Amazon can be seen in a few different ways. Of Amazon’s 20 all-time bestsellers (in any format), only two were originally released prior to Kindle’s 2007 launch. (Another observation from the top-20 list is that all the titles are fiction except StengthsFinder 2.0). Second, in 2011, Amazon customers bought more e-books than print books for the first time, a trend that continues today. Despite an industry-wide slowdown in e-book sales, Grandinetti said Amazon continues to see a transition from print to digital, adding that “our Kindle business is growing.”"
Source:  Publishers' Weekly, 4th September 2015

Exposure to Tommy Hilfiger's Facebook ads on multiple devices increased likelihood to buy

"The approach has helped apparel manufacturer and retailer Tommy Hilfiger better understand how its online ads influence in-store purchases. The company ran a three-month campaign from March to May in Germany in which Atlas delivered ads across mobile devices and desktops via post-impression retargeting.
Tommy Hilfiger found that for every 1,000 consumers exposed to the ad on a mobile device, 0.3 made a purchase. Similarly, for every 1,000 consumers exposed to the ad on a desktop, 0.33 made a purchase. But for every 1,000 who saw ads across multiple devices, 0.86 made a purchase, which suggests that multiple exposures to an ad can drive shoppers to buy.
Moreover, comparing the company’s customer-relationship management data with impression and clicks generated through the campaign, Atlas found that 13% of members of the Hilfiger Club loyalty program saw at least one of the retailer’s digital ads.
That’s crucial information, says Avery Baker, Tommy Hilfiger’s chief brand and marketing officer. “The campaign not only supported online sales and engagement but drove a measurable increase of in-store purchases—a result that we’ve always found hard to measure.”"

Friday 11 September 2015

Snapchat generates 4 billion video views a day

"Snapchat has joined an exclusive club: 4 billion video views daily.
The social media messaging app is showing strong momentum, doubling its daily video views in three months. The milestone was reported first this week by the International Business Times and confirmed Thursday by the Los Angeles Times.
The total daily views puts Snapchat in Facebook’s territory. Facebook reported in April that video on Facebook was getting more than 4 billion views a day. Facebook’s stat has drawn criticism from the video creators because Facebook counts a view after someone watches a minimum of three seconds of autoplay in the News Feed. YouTube, which reached the 4 billion daily views threshold in 2012, has stopped reporting that metric, instead focusing on watch time as its top measure of engagement.
Snapchat video views are counted on click, but since they play full screen and are only a maximum of 10 seconds long, it seems likely that people are paying attention."

Tuesday 8 September 2015

'Every minute online' infographic


This is a new infographic from Domo showing what happens every minutes relating to services like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Uber and so on.

I generally hate infographics - badly sourced, out of date, irrelevant etc - but this one is good.

See it here - created in mid August 2015

WhatsApp has 900m monthly active users

"WhatsApp now has 900 million monthly active users"
Source:  Facebook update by Jan Koum of WhatsApp, 4th September 2015
Earlier - 800m announced on 18th April - 150 days earlier
MAUs

Monday 7 September 2015

35% of TV viewing is spent watching VOD

"The report reveals that VoD services are meeting consumer needs and enabling them to change viewing habits. Consumers now spend six hours per week watching streamed on-demand TV content – more than double the amount in 2011. With recorded and downloaded content added to the equation, today 35 per cent of all TV and video viewing is spent watching VoD.
Further findings highlight the significant growth in consumers watching video on a portable device: 61 per cent now watch on their smartphones, an increase of 71 per cent since 2012. When taking tablets, laptops, and smartphones into consideration, nearly two thirds of time spent by teenagers’ watching TV and video is on a mobile device.
At the same time, user-generated content (UGC) platforms account for a growing share of consumers’ TV and video viewing. Nearly 1 in 10 consumers watch YouTube for more than three hours per day, and one in three now consider it very important to be able to watch UGC on their main TV set in the home.
Anders Erlandsson, Senior Advisor, Ericsson ConsumerLab, commented: “The continued rise of streamed video on demand and UGC services reflects the importance of three specific factors to today’s viewers: great content, flexibility, and a high-quality overall experience. Innovative business models that support these three areas are now crucial to creating TV and video offerings that are both relevant and attractive.”
Other key findings include:
Linear TV remains key
– The popularity of linear TV remains high, mainly due to its access to premium viewing and live content, like sports, and its social value
– Linear viewing is linked to age: 82 per cent of 60–69 year olds say they watch linear TV on a daily basis, while only 60 per cent of millennials (those aged 16–34) do so
Binge viewing changes the game
– Bingeing, the watching of multiple episodes of TV and video content in a row, has rapidly become a key part of the TV and media experience
– This habit is prominent among SVoD users, where 87 per cent binge view at least once a week, compared to 74 per cent of non SVoD users"
Source:  Ericsson's TV & The Media 2015 Report, reported in Advanced Television, 3rd September 2015
Full report here
Methodology:
"More than 20,000 online interviews were held with people aged 16–59, and over 2,500 with consumers aged 60–69, across 20 markets: Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and the US. All respondents have a broadband internet connection at home, and watch TV/video at least once a week. Almost all use the internet on a daily basis. This sample is representative of over 680 million people. "

Italians watch TV for longer than any other country in Europe

"Unlike the rest of Europe, Italians actually increased their average daily consumption of broadcast TV in 2014. Following a steep fall in 2007, traditional TV viewing grew by an average of four minutes and 42 seconds per-person per-day between 2008 and 2014 to reach four hours and 20 minutes. If we include online and pay tv viewing figures, the number of hours spent watching video in Italy rises to four hours and 37 minutes per day.
“Continued growth of viewing, in particular linear, can be attributed to Italy’s difficult financial situation, with high unemployment correlating to an increase in TV viewing time on a per-person per-day basis,” Cryan said.
Online viewing times are very low compared to the other countries in the study. “Despite investment, we are not seeing the kind of pick up or adoption in other European countries,” Cryan said."
Source: Report from IHS, reported by Advanced Television, 2nd September 2015

Using a mix of public transport and Uber can be cheaper than owning a car

"Consider a household that makes about 2,000 vehicle trips per year, in line with the national average. (If that sounds like a lot of trips, remember the figure is per household and not per person.) It can either spend $10,000 a year on car ownership,14 or it can use a combination of public transit (at a cost of $2.50 per journey15) plus Uber and taxis.
If the household can make all its trips by public transit, then that’s by far the cheapest option. But suppose it cannot. How many Uber rides can it afford to take before owning a car becomes cheaper?
If Uber costs about $20 per ride — about what an UberX costs now for a 5-mile ride in New York in moderate traffic — then the household can make up to about 15 percent of its trips by Uber and the combination of Uber and public transit will remain cheaper than owning a car. On the one hand, that figure implies that the household still needs excellent access to public transit since it must make 85 percent of its journeys that way. On the other hand, 15 percent of 2,000 trips is still 300 Uber rides per year."
Source:  FiveThirtyEight, 28th August 2015

UK Internet users spend nearly 3 hours a day online; mobile & tablets account for 56%

"IAB & UKOM publish “definitive” time people spend online - 2hrs 51 mins a day. Aims to clear up confusion around online media consumption figures. Mobiles and tablets account for over half (56%) of internet time.
The Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) and UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) today published a definitive figure on how long people actively spend online each day, to bring clarity to the market by removing any confusion around the conflicting sources claiming to measure time online.
UKOM, the official cross-industry standards body that measures online audiences using approved comScore data, revealed that the average Briton online spent 2 hours 51 minutes per day actively using the internet at home and work (during the first six months of 2015).
Internet time is split 1 hour 16 minutes (45%) on PCs/laptops, 1 hour 9 minutes on smartphones (40%) and 26 minutes on tablets (15%).
“There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the various sources claiming to measure how long people spend on different media,” said the IAB’s Chief Strategy Officer, Tim Elkington. “So, we wanted to put a stake in the ground for internet time to remove this misconception and help advertisers understand how much time they realistically have to play with to reach people online. It equates to about 1 in every 6 waking minutes¹.”
The data comes from a combination of meters measuring the behaviour of 73,000 people (a panel) plus thousands of sites and apps being tagged (site analytics).
The resulting figures purely measure “active attention”, that is, only the time people are actively using the internet to do something. Elkington explains: “If I’m surfing the internet on my PC but then start using a word document, the internet time is stopped even though the web page is still open. A similar approach is applied on mobile when internet activity is interrupted due to calls or texting.”
Social media overtakes entertainment in share of online time
The UKOM/comScore data reveals that 16.7% of all UK internet time (1 in every 6 minutes) across computers, tablets and smartphones is spent on social media – up from 12% two years ago. Social media has overtaken entertainment, whose share nearly halved from 22.1% to 12.4%.
Games follows next at 6% share – double that of two years ago (3%). Together, these activities account for over one third of Britons’ time online.
Share of time differs dramatically by device
Social media accounts for over double the share of mobile/tablet internet time (21.4%) than it does of desktop internet time (9.8%). Games (8.6% vs 2.3%), Instant Messaging (6.7% vs 0.8%) and News (4.8% vs 2.2%) also take up a much larger proportion of mobile internet time than desktop time. In contrast, entertainment accounts for over double the share of desktop internet time (18.5%) than it does on mobile/tablet (8.3%); for email, it’s over six times the share (5.0% vs 0.8%).
“When trying to reach consumers, advertisers can’t afford to think of time online as a homogenous entity,” said UKOM’s General Manager Scott Fleming. “Mobile internet time is more heavily skewed towards social networking and games whilst desktop is more loaded towards email and entertainment such as film and multimedia. “The most effective digital ad strategies recognise and take into account how behaviour and mind-set differ dramatically by device.”"

A summary of UK boys’ and girls’ gaming habits and preferences

"Boys
Core focus on game consoles because they are immersive
It’s all about completing the game and being the best
Tablets skew young or are more for casual gaming; they could be used to complement console games or promote conversation
YouTube is important for knowledge, discovery, and passing on skills—and should be embraced!
Girls
Gaming peaks at age 9-10, then migrates to smartphones in secondary school—social or puzzle games appeal the most
Don’t stereotype—racing and platform games are popular
Be inclusive
Mobile has opened up the market to girls – embrace the opportunity with this audience!"

Wednesday 2 September 2015

40% of comments on Instagram mention another user

"Why is Instagram ramping up messaging? Brina Lee, a software engineer for the app, told that it's in part because 40% of comments on Instagram posts are @mentions which name-check another member, showing that users already like to bring cool photos and videos to each others' attention. The new features will help them do so in a more efficient manner."
Source:  Fast Company, 1st September 2015

Tuesday 1 September 2015

21.4m tweets were sent about the 2015 VMAs in the US

"In the United States alone, 21.4 million tweets were sent about the ceremony by 2.2 million individuals. In turn, 11.8 million people received those tweets, which resulted in the VMA tweets themselves potentially being seen 676 million times. This is a significant increase over last year's social media effect, when just 12.6 million tweets were sent.
Also, not surprising, the minute after West's presidential aspirations were announced, Twitter exploded. More than 247,500 tweets were sent at roughly 10:49 p.m. Eastern.
Sources were unclear as to how many of those tweets contained the identical joke, "West/Minaj 2020.""
Source:  LA Times, 31st August 2015

Mobile-only audience of UK news outlets as percentage of total UK audience



Source:  NRS, quoted in Journalism.co.uk, 26th August 2015