Thursday 29 September 2016

The first Clinton-Trump Debate was seen by a record 84m TV viewers in the US

"The first televised skirmish between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump broke the all-time TV audience record for a presidential debate, averaging 84 million viewers across a dozen ad-supported broadcast and cable networks and PBS.
Monday night's showdown between the former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady and her opponent, the real estate mogul, steak wrangler and reality TV star, surpassed the 80.6 million viewers who tuned in for the lone debate between President Jimmy Carter and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1980. That event aired on the three extant broadcast networks: ABC, CBS and NBC.
The total Nielsen turnout does not include viewers who streamed the debate online or watched from a bar, restaurant, hotel or other out-of-home venue. Also not included in the final debate tally was C-Span, which is not officially measured by Nielsen.
NBC boasted the largest debate audience, drawing 18.2 million viewers, or 22% of the overall viewership for the 99-minute event. ABC scared up the second-largest crowd, averaging 13.5 million viewers, while CBS took third with 12.1 million. Fox News Channel claimed the biggest debate crowd among the cable news outlets, drawing 11.4 million viewers, while its rival CNN averaged 9.94 million. MSNBC finished near the back of the pack with an average delivery of 4.91 million viewers.
NBC also won the night among the core news demographic, averaging 8.3 million adults 25 to 54 to CBS's 4.8 million and ABC's 4.75 million. CNN's coverage drew 4.51 million members of the demo, topping the much older-skewing Fox News Channel's 3.55 million and eclipsing MSNBC's average delivery of 1.59 million demographically apposite viewers.
As has been the case with every presidential debate since the first televised joust (Nixon-Kennedy, Sept. 26, 1960), Monday night's proceedings were uninterrupted by commercial messages. Pre- and post-debate ads on the Big Three broadcast networks went for as much as $250,000 per 30-second spot."
Source:  AdAge, 27th September 2016

Adobe's Digital Insights Report 2016




Some interesting stats on traffic soutces, and ad blocking

Monday 19 September 2016

India has overtaken the US to become the world's second largest online population

"India has overtaken the United States to become the world's second largest Internet market, with 333 million users, trailing China's 721 million. But a new report released today by the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development also confirms that just six nations – including China and India – together account for 55% of the total global population still offline, because of the sheer size of their populations.
While Internet access is approaching saturation in richer nations, connectivity is still not advancing fast enough to help bridge development gaps in areas like education and health care for those in poorer parts of the world, according to the 2016 edition of The State of Broadband report.
Globally, an estimated 3.9 billion people are not using the Internet. But the Commission's new report estimates that, between them, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria account for 55% of all unconnected people, while 20 countries – including the US – account for a full 75% of those not using the Internet. These findings suggest that targeted efforts in just a few key markets could help enormously in redressing the gaping 'digital divide' between those who are online and those still offline."
Source:  Press release from the ITU, 15th September 2016

Snapchat has 150m daily users, inc 50m in Europe

More than 2m people watched the first live NFL Twitter stream

"The NFL just released numbers on last night’s debut of NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Twitter, and they are pretty damn good.
More than 2M people watched the game on Twitter, compared to 48M who watched it on TV. The average user also spent 22 minutes watching on Twitter, compared to 25 minutes watching on TV (which is the only stat that is almost identical).
More specifically, an average of 243,000 people were watching on Twitter at any given time, compared to an average of 15.4M watching at once on CBS and NFL Network (the two networks showing the game on cable).
While the numbers seem low compared to cable, it’s actually a pretty big win for the network, which was able to show investors and the rest of the industry that at least some people will actually watch a live streamed game on Twitter.
But perhaps even more important than the numbers was the very positive reaction almost anyone had that watched the game. Thousands of people (including myself) took to Twitter to share how impressed they were with the quality of the stream – even over LTE or 4G. At certain points Twitter’s stream was even more current than cable, which can lag behind 10 – 15 seconds. Many also commented that the Apple TV viewing experience (which put a timeline next to the stream) was a great way to watch the game."
Source:  Techcrunch, 16th September 2016
Update - Viewing numbers are going up - The week after's game got 2.6m

Thursday 15 September 2016

Pokemon Go has been downloaded over 500m times

"Between hordes of people running all over the place in chase of wild Pokémon, various car accidents, and celebrities getting in on the action, you're likely aware that "Pokémon Go" is ridiculously popular.
We didn't know exactly how popular the game was until Wednesday, however, when the game's creator revealed that the game has been downloaded over 500 million times.
For some context, "Pokémon Go" quickly leapt past competitors to become the fastest downloaded app of all time after it launched in early July 2016. The game was the first to hit 10 million in the shortest amount of time, and it grew far beyond that soon after. Its vast popularity has since plateaued, with the game hovering around 30-40 million monthly active users (MAUs) — that's still really impressive, but the white hot excitement has cooled somewhat in the past month or two."

Tuesday 13 September 2016

There are more than 100m paid music streaming accounts



Source:  Digital Music News, 6th September 2016
Note - Presumably some people pay for multiple services, as they do with Amazon and Netflix

Video accounts fo over 50% of BuzzFeed's revenue

"[V]ideo represents more than 50 percent of BuzzFeed’s total revenue, compared with 15 percent at the end of 2014. In the next two years, BuzzFeed expects that video will generate up to 75 percent of its advertising revenue, according to a person briefed on the company’s operations."
Source;  New York Times, 5th September 2016

Smartphone apps account for 50% of the time spent in digital media in the US



Source:  comScore, 1st September 2016

Digital in APAC in 2016


The UK Home Entertainment market was worth £2.24bn in 2015

"The latest insights into the home entertainment industry have been revealed at the BASE MESA Entertainment Summit. As over 300 guests from across the industry representing stakeholders from the UK, Europe and US, gathered at the event which brought together the BASE Category Showcase and the MESA Transforming Home Entertainment Summit under one roof.
Analyst firm Ampere Analysis, which specialises in big-data analytics around home entertainment, pay and multiscreen TV as well as next-generation content distribution, opened the event with analysis covering physical and digital formats, highlighting a £1.3 billion opportunity for film and TV as economic growth outpaces spending on entertainment.
The UK Home Entertainment category was valued at £2.24 billion (€2.65bn) in 2015, performance across 2016 has been steady with premium products performing well. A strong line up of diverse content spanning blockbuster franchises through to special interest comedy is expected to close the year with further growth.
Key programme highlights from across the event included: Luke Bradley-Jones, Director of TV and Content Products at Sky, who in a presentation entitled ‘The Digital Ownership Opportunity’, shared insights into the Sky Store Buy & Keep service and the potential that it sees for digital ownership in the home entertainment market."