A quarter (25.9%) of consumers in the big five European Union countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) now browse the Internet via their mobile phones.   This is according to comscore’s MobileLens survey (via Marketing Charts), which shows that the rates of mobile Internet use range from 36.7% in the UK to 20.4% in Germany.

The UK also leads in the % that accessed news (36.5% compared to the European average of 29.7%) and accessed a social network while on their mobiles (23.8% vs 14.9%).   It’s Italy however that has the highest rate of Smartphone users (33.6%), while Spain (56.1%) has the highest number of 3G subscribers.

It should be said that the UK figures are a little different to Ofcom’s recent Communications Market Report (summary here), which showed that only 18% of Brits access the Internet via their mobiles – however comscore’s figures come from June, while Ofcom’s report is a comprehensive year in review and so draws data from Q1.

Comscore says that the number of mobile music users has grown by 10% over the past year, meaning that there are now 54 million consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain who listen to music via their mobiles – or 23.8% of the total.

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An earlier post was all about the (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report and the way in which TV and social media campaigns can work in tandem.

Deloitte has now looked into this as well, releasing a report to coincide with the upcoming Edinburgh Television Festival.   Deloitte commissioned research among 4000+ adults, and found that, as much as people like myself talk about ‘social TV’, only 7% of those polled had become fans of their favourite programmes.

At the same time, the generational shift that Ofcom found in its research, also comes into play here.   Among 18-24 year olds, 46% liked their favourite shows on Facebook.

Also, Deloitte’s research is about actively liking a programme, there is of course a stage before that of people simply tweeting about live TV while its taking place, or exchanging Facebook / IM messages about it.

TV ads skipped by 86%

Another reason why combining online +TV could become more attractive for brands could come down to 86% of viewers with PVRs skipping ads. This is the result of a second Deloitte study conducted to coincide with the Edinburgh TV Festival.

In fact, it’s younger viewers, the very ones likely to be online, who are more receptive to advertising messages.   Deloitte found that while a third of over 55s said that no form of advertising impacted them, only 13% of under 25s felt the same.

Image – ccharmon

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• Why combining TV + online can pay off for brands and broadcasters (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
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More stats from the 377 page (UK) Ofcom Communications Markets Report, in particular ones that reinforce the fact that TV-led campaigns or properties are very often more effective when combined with online.     Three findings in particular (with graphs)

1 – Live, scheduled TV carries a low attention threshold. Compared to other forms of media, consumers are least likely to give live TV and radio their undivided attention.     Social media and print have medium attention scores, while games and downloaded video content rank best when it comes to consumer focus (hence the wisdom of spending money on in-game promotions).

2 – We’re now more likely to ‘media stack.’ 20% of media time is now simultaneous – very often involving TV + the Internet and mobile phones.  Among the under 25s that proportion rises to 29%.  16-24 year olds managed to fit just over nine and a half hours’ worth of media into a little  over six and a half hours of actual time.

3 – The most popular YouTube channels are variations of mainstream media properties. It’s a myth that we want to spend our time on YouTube watching home made ‘world’s funniest animal’ type videos.   Instead, much as we do on TV, we want to see content with high production values, involving recognisable names.

Where’s the proof that TV + online work in tandem works?  Here are three random examples:

1 – PHD and Medialets developed a True Blood iPhone ad to support the last series.   Though we can question whether HBO’s 38% increase in viewers was down to the mobile campaign, the best click-through rate of 8.73% that the campaign achieved was way beyond the usual display ad rate of 0.02%.

2 – Speaking of click-throughs, Coke achieved one of 6%, when it ran a Promoted Tweets / Twitter World Cup campaign.   Running a World Cup promo while people were tweeting about matches made sense – Twitter saw a clear spike in activity, including a record for the number of tweets per second during the recent tournament.

3 – One of my favourite examples is this one:  US broadcaster Oxygen piloted a “real time viewing party” called Oxygen Live around one of its hit shows – Bad Girls Club.   This pulled in comments and conversations from several networks such as Twitter into an online hub while the show was airing.

Oxygen Live kicked off 30 mins before each show started, meaning that it was trending on Twitter 5 mins before each episode and there was a consistent increase in viewers over the hour.   In fact in the US West Coast when they *didn’t* run Oxygen Live, ratings were up 9% among women aged 18-49.   Once Oxygen Live launched that ratings then saw a much bigger increase, up to 57%.

And as far as a successful example of integrating TV advertising and an online campaign goes….Old Spice anyone?

As a final point, it’s worth noting that two of the new social networks that have created a buzz over the past few weeks, Miso and Glue, have a model that’s directly related to people checking into entertainment events and TV programmes, as opposed to locations.

We’ve got a more detailed summary of the Ofcom report in the latest (agency) Rabbit feed, the html version is here.

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• Ofcom: multi-tasking media junkies on the rise (channel4.com)
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A statistic from a Harris Poll in the US (via Marketing Charts) – 50% of the under 35s who use social media say they are influenced ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ by reviews on social media.

This compares to 45% of under 35s who are influenced by mainstream newspaper and magazine reviews and only 17% that are influenced by celebrity endorsements (41% are influenced by blogs).   Good news for marketers everywhere – get rid of the expensive celebrity endorsements and focus on social engagement campaigns?

Even among American consumers aged 55+, over a third (37%) pay attention to what people on Facebook or Twitter are saying, a surprisingly high number.

As an aside I took a look at Internet penetration as a whole among older age groups.   Here, in the UK, according to Ofcom, 60% of 55-64 year olds have household Internet access, but only 33% of people aged 65+.

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Despite a previous Ofcom report showing that for (UK) 16-24 year olds the mobile phone was the second most essential piece of media behind the TV and ahead of the PC, metrics firm Nielsen says that it’s really people aged 25+, and in particular 35+, who are most likely to be going online via their mobiles.

36% of mobile social network use is done by 35-54 year olds, with 34% being done by 25-34 year olds.   By comparison, 18-24 year olds only account for 16%.   One reason for this could in fact be that smartphones are still fairly expensive and out of the reach of many 18 year olds.   And a lot of people aged 30+ will be issued a blackberry or other smartphone as part of their jobs.

On the Web as a whole, women tend to dominate in social media.   Last year Rapleaf did a study all about women having more friends on social networks than men, while Royal Pingdom looked at 19 sites and found that 53% of users were female.   Nielsen says that this trend is replicated on mobiles – 55% of users are women while 45% are men.

Are mobile marketers getting it wrong?   Rather than trying to aim their mobile campaigns at 19 year old students, should they be turning their sights to 35 year old female business executives?

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• The Internet – once and for all it really isn’t about teens (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
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Over the past two years there’s been a raft of research out showing how 30+ Internet users are steadily getting to grips with social media.  Despite that I still hear occasionally comments like “that’s not for us, we’re not cool”, when talking social networks with brand managers – the perception that older consumers still surf the Internet much as they used to five years ago (in a fairly functional way) still holding true.

Leigh Householder (Advergirl), puts these myths to rest once and for all by looking through the latest Nielsen numbers.   Certainly in the US, “even when you take out our work lives, adults 25-44 are the heaviest users of the Internet”, browsing 34 hrs per month at home compare to 10 for teens.   This age group is also more likely to embrace ‘newer’ things such as watching video online.

The one area where this isn’t the case is on mobile phones, where teens watch six hours of video footage a month on their phones, more than twice as much as the 35-44 year old audience (even here I am surprised the ratio isn’t higher).   This ties into the Ofcom research that shows that while computers+Internet is the second most essential media for all age groups 25+, for 16-24 year olds its mobiles.

Leigh also shares this excellent diagram with us about how different age groups use social media.   In Leigh’s words, “while we’re boldly networking with everyone from our high school sweethearts to someone we met at a conference the other day, they’re (teens) typing with the same people they sit across the lunch table with.”

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I’m coming to this a few days late due to being in transit to Cow Africa, but UK comms regulator OFCOM has published it’s regular digest of facts and stats. Among other things, the look at adult media literacy reveals that online TV watching is relatively high in the UK.

In particular, 29% of Internet users, watch TV online or download programmes or films. This is largely driven by broadcasters such as the BBC and its iPlayer service, but it means that with 73% of the UK population online, over one in five adults (21%) watch TV over the Internet.

The research also shows that Internet usage among seniors is on the increase, with 41% of the over 65s now online. The Ofcom report also refers back to earlier data about most missed media – I personally use this stat time and time again, especially as it shows that TV is less and less of a ‘can’t live without’ for 16-24 year olds and that for them, mobile phones have pushed PCs+Internet into third place (NewTeeVee has the chart).

The statistic about Brits watching TV online is interesting. It shows that if the content and ways of watching it are good enough, the uptake will reflect that. And that content is what people are used to seeing on their TV screens.

For instance, despite all the talk about the growth of online video and reach of the You Tubes of this world, a report in the summer by Comscore found that these sites capture around 10 minutes of the average US Internet time, and 15 minutes for the UK.

Image – Mr Phillip

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