The other week  I wrote a post with a run-down of stats, about why brands need to be ‘mobile first’ rather than ‘digital first’.  Following that stats came out showing that in the US, mobile users spent longer on Facebook than PC users.

Now data about mobile social networking in Europe has appeared from Comscore.  While the social media audience on PCs grew 8% to 171 million in the major EU states (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) over the past year, the mobile audience grew 43% to 66.9 million.

Yes, that means the PC audience for social media is still 2.5x larger than the mobile audience, but the trend is only one way.   Moreover, if you look at individual social networks, the picture is different.  Twitter’s mobile audience grew 101% and LinkedIn’s 96%.

At the IAB UK Mobile Engage conference last week, Twitter actually stated that 80% of its UK user base now accessed the network via their phones.

Related articles

• Death to Internet Week (marketersstudio.com)
• Twitter Confirms 10 Million Active Users in the UK (mashable.com)
• Many Platforms, One Voice: How to Maintain a Consistent Social Media Persona (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
• Intel launches digital magazine – You know, for kids (digitaltrends.com)

The other week someone asked me what an agency such as Rabbit (where I work) should be focusing on going forward.

My reply, was previously organisations have been talking about a digital first approach.   In other words, concentrate on online channels and content 1st, which then filters into the offline world.   However now the priority has to be mobile first,  you cater in the 1st instance for people who may be consuming your content via their smartphones.

Sounds obvious enough, but some recent stats demonstrate the need to move from theory to practice:

• In February 2012, smartphone penetration in the five main European Union states was 48.9% – 54.7% in the UK .  Similarly, in the US, over half of all mobile phones will be smartphones in 2013 are now smartphones, according to Nielsen stats.

• Most in the UK had used an app (52%) a mobile browser (52.6%), and though the mobile games space is growing with 37% having played a game, 39% had accessed social networks via their mobile

• Depending on who you believe, mobile Internet will overtake fixed PC Internet use in either 2014 or 2015. (infographic from Microsoft above)

• In April for the first time in 40 months, social network apps overtook games.  Analytics company Flurry says mobile users spent 24 minutes each a day on games and social networks, with social networks slightly ahead.    Overall users Flurry tracked spent 77 minutes a day with mobile apps – so over an hour a day

• A related study published in the Telegraph, found that smartphone owners make *fewer* telephone calls, spending five hours a week surfing the Internet on their devices

• The UK study by Recombu.com found that smartphone owners spend more time sending emails, on social media and shopping online…and less time reading books, exercising or watching TV

• That latter stat ties into an Ofcom one I use quite a lot about the most essential form of media among UK consumers.   Among 18-24 year olds, the TV is now the 3rd most essential media (after mobiles and PC+Internet) and another piece of research this week said that 41% of 18-24 year olds (1/5 of all adults) had abandoned live TV

• In fact, a lot of that reading now happens on Tablets.  “Tablet is the new PC” says a Forbes blog post – Gartner is predicting a 98% increase in tablet sales in 2012 to 118 million units

• In March 2012, mobile devices accounted for 10% of traffic to online retail sites.  Separately, a study by SEO Agency Spy said that 54% of UK consumers had made a purchase via their mobiles, while only a minority (35%) would never consider it

• A study involving 34,000 people worldwide by browser Opera found that in some countries almost half of new Internet users are mobile only.   Bear in mind that Opera pulls its data from its own users, and that Opera’s main focus is now mobile devices, but this is still significant

• Though high-end digital camera sales are expected to remain strong, the bottom end of the market will suffer as more and more people use their smartphone as their main camera – digital camera shipments are expected to decline 4.3% in 2012

So what’s the conclusion?   In two, at the latest three years, mobile devices will be the main way of connecting to the Internet.   Younger consumers are already doing so, and various activities ranging from social media to online shopping are increasing on smartphones.

Smartphones are becoming the primary camera for more and more people coinciding with Instagram reaching 50 million users, while smartphone users are not only always connected but engage in content snacking as this US report says 

In other words, what they consume may not be different, but how they consume it, how long for, how they share it and how they view it will be.  That’s something we need to be ready for now.

Related articles

• Comscore’s 2012 Mobile Future in Focus Report – ten take outs (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• New Stats to Get You Moving on Mobile (deluxesmallbizblog.com)
• Mobile Internet will soon surpass PC internet usage! (trak.in)
• Opera claims 56% of users are mobile-only Web surfers (slashgear.com)

Last week Comscore released a major report around the mobile Internet, Mobile Future in Focus.  A lot of that has already been covered by the major social media sites, so because I didn’t get my act together in putting my post up soon enough, I’ve summarised ten key findings from the report.

Essentially they show that across all markets, but in the UK in particular, mobile devices are now the norm and not the exception when it comes to consumers going online, something that should be front of mind for all marketers.

It shows that more affluent 25-44 year olds are typical smartphone owners and it shows that mobile devices are becoming an essential shopping companion when shoppers are in bricks and mortars stores.

1 – A majority of American (55.2%) and British (56.6%) mobile phone users now use mobile media, defined as browsing the web, downloading content or accessing apps.   Note however how far ahead Japan is, with three quarters accessing mobile online media.

2 – In fact, the UK (as well as Spain) has now passed the smartphone tipping point, with over half (51%) of mobile owners being smartphone users.    As long ago as May 2010, smartphone sales passed feature phone sales (as opposed to ownership) in the UK

3 – The UK is also ahead when it comes to web traffic from mobile devices (9.5%), compared to the US (8.2%), Australia (7.7%) and Japan (7.1%).  The latter figure suggests that though Japanese mobile phone users are more likely to go online in absolute terms (see stat one), UK mobile users access the web more heavily

Note that these figures account for all web traffic, including people sitting at work.   I’d guess you’d arrive at higher figures if you looked at people accessing the Internet outside of the workplace

4 – Certain media channels in particular are getting a lot of their traffic from mobile devices.  Comscore tells us that in December 17% of movie visitors reached the BBC through a combination of app and browser usage

5 – The top selling devices in both the US and the EU5 are the iPhone4 and the iPhone3GS (the iPhone4S is no three in the US and no 5 in the EU5)

Of course overall Android has a higher share of smartphones than Apple iPhones (31% vs 21% in Europe).   However, as I’ve posted previously if you are looking at handset sales you are looking at the wrong thing, you need to look at user behaviour, and previous research has shown that 61% of European mobile web traffic comes from Apple devices

6 – One reason for that could be that the ubiquity of Android phones means that if you walk into your local phones4u and ask for a “phone” you will be steered towards one of the many lower end Android devices.   Indeed, the cost of the monthly service was the second most important factor among European smartphone purchasers, behind network quality.

7 – In the EU5, most smartphone owners are still male (55.7% vs 44.3% – in the US it is a more even 51/49).   There has been evidence in the past to show that Android phones have more of a male bias than iPhones

8 – If you are running a mobile marketing campaign, don’t make the mistake of assuming your audience is all teens.  In both the US and EU5, smartphone ownership is heaviest among the 25-44 year old audience possibly due to the price of buying a handset and possibly due to the fact that a lot of workplaces  offer smartphones as their company phone

9 – A lot of attention in 2011 went on the mobile photo network Instagram (now arguably the largest mobile only social network in the world), and for a lot of US and European consumers the mobile is now their primary camera   In the States 74% and in the EU5 84% took photos with their phone.

The % who sent emails (31%) and accessed social media (26%) via their mobiles in Europe is lower, but I’d imagine significant variations if broken down country by country.  However it is worth noting that in absolute numbers, 25.5 million Europeans access a blog or social network via their smartphones every day

10 – Though it bases this statement largely on US figures, Comscore tells us that smartphones are “poised to become consumers’ favourite shopping companion in 2012.”   One in five U.S. smartphone owners took a picture of a product while in store and nearly the same number texted or called family or friends about a specific product.

Women in particular were more likely to make shopping a ‘social’ experience, with 24% taking pictures, while men were more likely to use their phones for information gathering, such as scanning a barcode or comparing prices.

Finally Comscore has a stat about mobile phone owners who scanned QR codes – in the US it was 20.3% and in the UK 12.3%.  Of course, that stat doesn’t tell us anything about their experience when they scanned it (or indeed, whether they scanned successfully)

Related articles

• comScore: Japan, An Early Mover In Mobile, Trails The U.S., Others In Smartphones (techcrunch.com)
• ComScore report finds 42 percent of US mobile users have smartphones, Android … – Engadget (engadget.com)
• Consumers Going Mobile in Retail Stores, comScore (beet.tv)
• ComScore’s 2012 Mobile Future Whitepaper Highlights (tomorrowsocial.com)
• Smartphones Become the Go-To Tool for Shoppers (entrepreneur.com)

Research out by Pew shows that when it comes to the major US hard news story of 2012, the Presidential election, voters prefer tried and tested news sources.

Only one in twenty (6%) Americans hears about the campaign from Facebook, and while 20% get election news from online news apps or websites, 36% get it from cable TV.Similarly, 41% of Twitter users ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’ get election news on Twitter, compared to 40% who never do.

Two observations about this study:

Pew headlines it by saying “Twitter, Facebook play very modest roles.”

I would add the words “so far.”   Pew’s research also shows that younger age groups who are most likely to get news from social media, have so far been turned off by the campaign

Secondly, we’ve yet to have the set piece events of the election, the live Presidential debates.   The recent US Superbowl showed how social media and live TV now goes hand in hand with 10,000 tweets a second being sent in the closing minutes.

Related articles

• Which Superbowl Ad Got The Most Social Media Love? [INFOGRAPHIC] (ubervu.com)
• Election 2012: Voters Expect Candidates to Be on Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
• Poll: People Don’t Rely On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter For Election Information (readwriteweb.com)

Stats of the month – January

To kick off the New Year, here’s the second in my series of presentations about ten stats of the (previous) month.     Each slide has an embedded link for further information, and I’ve also included the text and link for each slide below:

 1 – Social networking has become the world’s most popular online activity

It accounts for 20% of Internet time and social networking sites now reach 82% of the world’s online population (Comscore)

In fact, there are now more Facebook users than Buddhists! (Rune Leth Andersen)

2 – At the same time, social media may be reaching saturation point in many markets

“Social is running out of hours.  Social is also running out of people” - George Colony, Forrester

Forrester says social media only slightly less popular than shopping and childcare

3 – As a result, the growth area for social remains emerging markets

According to Pew Research, out of 20 countries surveyed, the top three for the % of the total population on social media were Israel (53%), USA (50%) and the UK (50%)

However, if you look at the % of the Internet population on social media, the top three are Indonesia (86%), Russia (84%) and Egypt (82%)

4 – Facebook may have the numbers, but Twitter shapes the news agenda

Twitter was the most cited social network in the media in 2011, beating Facebook in 10/12 months – including Sept when Facebook’s new features were launched (Highbeam Research)

5 – The Internet is now Britain’s 2nd biggest news source

According to Oliver & Ohlbaum, 75% use the TV for news, 68% the Internet, 54% newspapers and 33% mobile

6 – Social media continues to chip away at traditional media use

In the UK, 18% read a printed national newspaper less due to social media use.  In Australia the figure is 21% and in the US it is 15% (Ofcom)

7 – Younger and female users of social media use it as a prime news source

51% of 18-24 year olds in the UK, 53% in the US, 61% in France and 61% in Italy use social channels for breaking news (Ofcom)

8- Social TV continues to rise in importance

More proof that social media and TV can effectively work hand in hand:

38% of Internet consumers have used a social network to recommend a TV programme and 29% often discuss what they are watching on TV in real-time online (Motorola)

9 – Apple dominates the mobile web

61% of European non PC Internet traffic comes from Apple ‘iDevices’, while in the US 92% of mobile purchases were made via iPhones and iPads (Comscore / RichRelevance)

10 – Instagram on track to becoming the world’s biggest mobile social network

Overtaking Foursquare (SocialFresh)

The December stats of the month can be found here

Related articles

• Vivek Wadhwa, WaPo: Social media will become a feature rather than the “big thing” (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Prediction #1: Social media slides down the pedestal (swordandthescript.com)
• Top 10 Social Networking Resolutions for Business in 2012 (ipwatchdog.com)
• The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2012 (slideshare.net)
• Surprise hit Pinterest a top 10 most-trafficked social network | Logicamp (logicamp.wordpress.com)

Despite commanding 95% of social networking time in the US it is Twitter which shaped the news agenda in 2011.

According to Highbeam Research (via Inside Facebook), Twitter received around 50% of mentions about social media in the (traditional) media, compared to 45% odd for Facebook

Except for February and April, Twitter was ahead every month, including September when Facebook launched Timeline and other features.

Why does this matter? Despite dwarfing every other social network and having a (now) celebrity founder in Mark Zuckerberg, the news media was more interested in the role Twitter had to play in society.   Which brings to mind the old arguments that many like myself used to make about the need to look beyond Twitter’s numbers to influence.

At 100 million regular (according to Twitter) users , Twitter’s user base is of course now substantial.   Twitter’s lead in the news agenda would have been down to everything from the Arab Spring, which has resulted in Arabic becoming the fastest growing language on Twitter , to here in the UK celebrity led scandals, which resulted in Twitter appearing on the front page of the nation’s tabloid newspapers

Photo – L.e.e  

Related articles

• Study: Twitter Beats Facebook for Media Attention in 2011 (insidefacebook.com)
• Facebook Sues Mark Zuckerberg (No, Not That Mark Zuckerberg) – Reuters (reuters.com)
• Facebook Subscriber # > Twitter Follower # ? (techcrunch.com)

UK communications and media regulator OFCOM has come out with another mammoth piece of research, this time the international communications market report, covering the UK, US, Australia, France, Italy and Germany.

Some (mainly about Britain being a national of online shopaholics ) of it has already been covered in the mainstream press, so I’ve tried to dig out ten findings that didn’t get so much of an airing.   These include ones that look at how social media has replaced traditional media as a news source

1 – Ofcom’s research confirms Forrester’s earlier claims that social media is reaching saturation point.  78% of American, 75% of Australian and 70% of UK Internet users have set up social media profiles.

2 – Not surprisingly, Facebook is the social site most are familiar with.   In the US, 89% of social media users are on Facebook, with Twitter a distant 2nd on 24%.    In the UK, the figures are 83% and 22%.   Surprisingly in the UK Friends Reunited (remember them?)  still gets a strong showing

3 – As you would expect, younger social media users visit those sites more frequently than older users.    In the UK, 68%, in the US 69% and in Australia 61% of 18-24 year old social media users go online 2+ times a day.   This compares to 26% of 45-64 year olds in the UK, 28% in the US and 29% in Australia who access social media.

4 – Does social media use reduce traditional media use?   For a minority it does.   In the UK 14% and in the US 10% claim to now watch less TV because of online social use.  However, 18% of British social media users and 21% of Australian social media users say they read print newspapers less.

Those stats can be read in a number of different ways.  There is no doubt that print circulations are in terminal decline, the UK nationals losing the equivalent of Glasgow in sales over the past year.

At the same time, there is evidence that integrating social media into TV programming and promotions has a small boost for overall ratings.

5 – In the various markets surveyed by Ofcom, between 1/5 and 1/3 of social media users don’t change their privacy settings.   In the UK, the % that leave them be is 30%, in Australia it is 28% and in the US 26%

6 – Ofcom’s research again proves that social media is more female than male dominated.      In the UK 49% of female and 32% of male social media users regularly update their profiles.   In the US, the figures are 51% and 37% and in Australia 42% and 31%

7 – Male and female behaviour is also different on social channels.   Across all markets, women are more likely to use social media “to see what other people are saying and doing.”    In the UK, 63% of women and 51% of men use social media in this way, while in the US the figures are 71% women and 57% men.

8 – Just as social media may have caused some users to leave traditional media, more and more now use it as a primary news source.

In the UK, 51% of 18-24 year olds and 37% of 25-34 year olds use social channels for breaking news.    Again, women are different than men.   While 43% of British women on social media find out about breaking news on these sites, for UK men the % is 37%.

9 – OFCOM’s research debunks the myth that social media use cuts you off from the real world.     A third of British (34%) and Australian (32%) 18-24 year olds now engage more in their community.   In Italy and Germany, over 4/10 younger social media users are more active.

10 – Most social media users distrustful of what they see:   Finally a finding that is slightly at odds with an earlier OFCOM stat about trust in social media, more users are distrustful as opposed to trustful about what they see on social sites.

However, there is not surprisingly a lot of variation by age here, with the under 45s being twice as likely to trust what they see on social channels compared to the over 55s.

Related articles

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Just as my last post about Android, Apple iOS and the US mobile Internet went live, some fresh stats came through from Comscore.

While the IBM study in my previous post refers to the US, Comscore’s latest smartphone figures are about the EU5 – UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Comscore shows that the iOS platform – and Comscore includes iPod Touches as well as iPhones and iPads – accounts for 30.5% of mobile devices in the major European markets.    This compares to 29% for Symbian (Nokia) and 24% for Android.

IBM’s research in the US shows that Apple iOS users are more active online in both relative and absolute terms.   In Europe, Comscore shows that this is even more the case.

61.1% of non-PC browser based page views – so the vast majority - are made from Apple mobile devices, compared to 20.9% from Android devices.   Meanwhile, despite clinging onto the no.2 spot in smartphone popularity, Symbian phones account for only 2.7% of European mobile Internet traffic.

Again, Comscore’s European stats mirror IBM’s American ones in showing the disproportionate influence iPad users have on the mobile Internet.

iPads currently account for 43% of all iOS traffic.   To put that in perspective, in April, Apple revealed that 10% of iOS devices were iPads.

The European Comscore and US IBM figures, raise the question of whether we are looking at smartphone market share in the right way.  Currently there seems to be a train of thought among marketers that Android is where it is at, because more are being shipped.

Yes, brands need to factor in both the Android and Apple iOS universes, but as the Symbian figures show, having lots of handsets on the market and having those users go online with their devices is not the same thing.

Related articles

• Apple iOS leads in mobile Internet traffic; iPads deliver 97 percent of tablet traffic (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• ComScore: Android continues dominate in U.S. smartphones (intomobile.com)
• comScore: iOS still ahead of Android in total user base thanks to iPads (slashgear.com)

Another study to add to the arsenal of ‘why spend money on social media.’

This time from Nielsen, which shows that among consumers using social media, consumer ratings and reviews come top as the preferred source of product information.

The Nielsen blog post doesn’t specify where the study took place, but assuming it was carried out in the US, social media users = just over half of the population (allowing for 3/4 Internet penetration and 3/4 Facebook use among the Internet population)

Less well received?   A company’s Twitter ID at 7%.  I interpret that in two ways.   First of all, corporate social media accounts aren’t trusted to deliver unbiased product information, but ones run by ordinary consumers are.

Secondly, you may not look to a social media feed for product information, but you will turn to it for news and / or complaints.

Finally, the Nielsen study again confirms female dominance in the social media realm with women on social networks more likely to talk to their friends about brands than men (81% vs 72%)

Related articles

• The State Of Social Media 2011: Social Is The New Normal (fastcompany.com)
• The Nielsen Social Media Report and What It Means to Customer Service (customerthink.com)

Forrester has come out with a study about European marketers and their attitude towards social media.

The good news if you are someone like me earning their living in this industry?  They “are as excited about social media today as ever before.”   The bad news:   A quarter intend to spend less than 35,000 euros this year (US 48k, GBP 30k)

Forrester’s Nate Elliott says it comes down to a mixture of resourcing and the inability to prove ROI.

Measuring social media is actually pretty easy.  However, as I’ve heard said many times before, it is tracking the right things that is difficult.   On that note check out this SEOMOZ article on social media KPIs, one of the best I’ve read

There is a third problem though, one that revolves around the perception that social media campaigns are free.   They are not.   Some investment, at the very least in monitoring what people are saying about you, needs to be made.

So how much does a social media campaign cost?   It depends on a whole range of factors, but this piece where various (US) social media practitioners took hypothetical ad budgets and scoped out what they would do with it is useful (thanks @shannonpaul for reminding me about the link!).

It shows you how can indeed build a year long programme for the price of a few magazine ads…but not for 35,000 euros.

(photo from loop oh via creative commons)

Related articles

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