Friday 27 June 2014

World Cup Checkins on Facebook

Data from Facebook




Or, as a summary


Thursday 26 June 2014

The average Tinder user spends 77 minutes per usage day using the app

"It’s not just all soccer and samba in Brazil at the moment. There also seems to be an increase in a passion of a third, technologically-augmented kind: an explosion in location-based dating apps, fueled by a volatile mix of delirious FIFA World Cup tourists, excited locals, and perhaps copious quantities of alcohol.
Tinder—the dating app that sees 750 million swipes and 10 million matches every day—has seen a 50% increase in downloads and usage in Brazil since the World Cup began. Brazil is Tinder’s third-largest user base behind the US and the UK, and the app is available in Portuguese.
“The average Tinder user spends more than one hour a day on Tinder, approximately 77 minutes, and that number is up by nearly 50% in Brazil since the start of the World Cup,” Tinder spokesperson Rosette Pambakian told Quartz.
Grindr, an app for gay and bisexual men, has also seen numbers spike. Compared to early June, the number of times users have opened the app has increased by 31%; and time spent on each session has jumped by 26%, a spokesperson said. Brazil is the sixth-largest market for Grindr, with 202,972 active monthly users."
Note - I'm assuming they mean per usage day - e.g. use it for 10 days per month, spend 770 mins

China's most popular mobile apps



Source:  Data from Enfodesk, reported by Quartz, 26th June 2014

28% of UK digital display advertising is bought programmatically

"Almost three in every 10 pounds spent on online display ads in 2013 were bought through ‘programmatic’ technologies, according to the first ever study which quantifies how UK digital display advertising is traded.
Conducted by research and strategy consultancy MTM on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB), the “Media Owner Sales Techniques” study shows that of the £1.86 billion¹ spent on display ads across the internet and mobile in 2013, 28% (about £500m million) was traded programmatically. ‘Programmatic’ refers to display ads that are bought and sold using automated systems and processes such as real-time bidding.
Direct sales between publishers and agencies/advertisers accounted for half (51%) of UK digital display ad sales while just over a fifth (22%) were bought through ad networks.
“Prior to this new research there was no reliable way to evaluate how big a role programmatic plays in the display market so it was time to put a stake in the ground and give the industry accurate numbers,” says Tim Elkington, Director of Research & Strategy at the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau.
“It’s important the industry understands how the market is split as it enables all those involved – media owners, advertisers and agencies – to take advantage of the exciting opportunities programmatic presents.”
Programmatic more dominant in mobile, less so in video
Whilst programmatic accounts for 28% of all digital display ads, this rises to 37% on mobile. In comparison, only 16% of internet video ads (excluding mobile video) are traded programmatically."

Wednesday 25 June 2014

More than three quarters of online American teens use Facebook

"Ever since Facebook CFO David Ebersman admitted last October that young teens were visiting the site slightly less frequently, most have accepted as fact that young people are fleeing Facebook en masse. Ivy League researchers have forecast that the service will be all but dead by 2017; President Obama recently claimed that young people “don’t use Facebook anymore”; and when comScore recently reported that fewer college students were using Facebook, media outlets ran stories on the “social platforms college kids now prefer.”
But if you take a closer look at the data it tells a very different story. Sure, many data sources show that Facebook’s usage among young people has declined slightly — but the drops are small, and the huge majority of this audience still uses the site. For instance, that comScore report only found a three-percentage-point drop in college-aged adults’ Facebook usage and reported that 89% of this audience still used Facebook — far more than used any other social site.
To investigate teens’ social behaviors further, we recently asked 4,517 US online youth (aged 12 to 17) not just whether they use social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr — but if they use those sites “about once a day,” “at least a few times each day,” or even if they were on any of the sites “all the time.”
The results were clear: Facebook remains young users’ favorite social network. More than three-quarters of online youth use Facebook — twice as many as use Pinterest or Tumblr or Snapchat, and more than use Instagram and WhatApp combined. And 28% of young users who are on Facebook say they use it “all the time,” a higher percentage than said this about any other social network."

Kim Kardashian's wedding photo is the most liked picture on Instagram

Tuesday 24 June 2014

The Top 10 San Francisco Airbnb hosts collectively control 248 property listings

"The top 10 San Francisco hosts on Airbnb collectively control 248 listings, or 5.2 percent of all the places for rent. They include property managers, hacker hostels and even hotels.
The No. 2 host by listings, Come2SF, with 51 houses and apartments, is also a property management company."
Note - The full article has maps, and lots more data about Aribnb in San Francisco

Monday 23 June 2014

Generation Z


The twitter account for adidas' Brazuca World Cup ball has more than 2 million followers


Source:  Brazuca on Twitter

More than 200m tracks a week are streamed in the UK

"From the beginning of July, audio streams of music will be counted towards official chart rankings alongside single purchases and downloads.
The Official Charts Company, which compiles the weekly chart, said it was a necessary reform in light of the growing popularity of digital streaming, with the number of weekly audio streams now exceeding 200m.
This year alone has already seen nine different tracks exceed a million streams in a week, including Rather Be, the No 1 debut by Clean Bandit, and Waves by Mr Probz."

180 UK Airbnb landlords list five or more properties in London

"Airbnb is a website that's fast becoming the bane of the hotel industry. The Silicon Valley startup, founded in 2008, lets people list their spare rooms – or even their entire home – for holiday leases online, opening up thousands of new places to stay in cities across the world.
It's one of the most frequently mentioned examples of the "sharing economy" the internet is powering; instead of companies and professionals leasing out houses and hotel rooms, individuals can make a bit of extra cash by sharing their home.
But the site's listings may not be what they first seem. Data from the site analysed by the Guardian suggests that professionals and buy-to-let investors with empty properties have carved out a huge presence on the site. The rise of these semi-professional landlords is causing concern among hoteliers and is potentially an extra headache for those struggling to get on the capital's crowded housing ladder.
The analysis of more than 13,000 Airbnb listings in London – by far the site's biggest UK market – shows more than 6,600 are leasing out an entire home or flat, rather than a spare room. More than 1,500 people listing properties on the site have multiple listings, with 180 listing five or more properties or rooms across London.
Some of the site's super users have dozens of properties across the city at once: one, who went by the name Petra, had 127 active listings on Thursday. The account did not return requests for comment.
The study also suggests many listings on the site – which vary from a £20-a-night spare room staying with a family in Newbury Park to a £900-a-night warehouse in Shoreditch – are rented out frequently, rather than just once or twice a year when the resident is away.
Using the number of reviews as a minimum for how often a property has been leased (visitors don't have to leave any feedback, meaning the actual number of stays may be higher) shows that more than 3,100 of the London listings have had more than 10 visits, while 1,600 have had more than 20 stays in the short life of the UK arm of the site."

Friday 20 June 2014

Twitter and TV led to increased brand awareness than TV alone

"Various research methods, including Nielsen’s Brand Effect for Twitter, Datalogix’s matched household modeling, Twitter’s in-Tweet surveys and sophisticated social listening data, have been employed to track results spanning 15 US-based SMG clients’ brand campaigns as well as general social TV engagements.
Results confirm that social TV is here and the opportunity to use it to enhance and amplify brand experiences is only getting bigger. Thus far, lab results demonstrate that Twitter’s ability to amplify significant cultural moments, far beyond original broadcast audiences.
1. Twitter + TV = Increased Brand Awareness vs TV Alone. For brands that used Twitter alongside their TV advertising, the study found on average a 6.9% increase in awareness for exposed audiences and significant increases for exposed and engaged audiences across awareness, intent and favorability measures.
2. Twitter Amplification = Sales Lift. For the brands that measured sales impact, we saw sales increases of 4% on average in households exposed to ads on Twitter and TV vs just TV ads alone.
3. The Twitter / TV Multitasker is Here – and TV Ad Recall is High for them. Only one quarter of tweeting occurs during the ad break, and it was highest during reality shows (27%). This supports existing Twitter research that found viewers who are actively engaging in social media while viewing TV are genuinely paying attention to both screens as TV show tune away is less and ad recall was higher for TV Twitter multitaskers.
Our results found that television ad recall was also 13% higher among Twitter users versus non-multitaskers.
4. Real-Time TV Content Engagement is on Twitter. Tweeting about events/shows is higher (20%) than “general browsing” about a specific event/show (15%.) In addition, most tweeting happens when something in show/game/ad is worthy of a tweet (70%).
Results underscore that content is paramount with consumers today, and with well-planned, powerfully viral, topical executions, it is possible to extend reach significantly beyond original viewing audiences."

Europe has produced 30 $1bn+ technology companies since 2000

"Europe has produced 30 technology companies worth more than $1bn (£590m) since the millennium, according to research that explodes the myth that the region's internet entrepreneurs lack vision and sell up too early.
Clothing retailer Asos, games studio King Digital, property portal Zoopla and music service Spotify are among the select group of Europe's most valuable technology companies, most of which remain independent.
The research, conducted by boutique investment bank GP Bullhound, shows Europe compares well to the US, which produced 39 billion-dollar companies between 2003 and 2013.
These valuable startups, which the researchers refer to as "unicorns", are few and far between. Statistically, it is very hard to find one, and the 30 produced in Europe account for just 0.27% of comparable tech firms founded in the last 14 years. (Israel is included in the numbers, due to its strength in tech and proximity to Europe.)"

Wednesday 18 June 2014

In-store beacons drive interactions with ads

"If the writing was not on the wall already that the use of proximity-aware beacons was the future of retail, now we have some data to back it up.
According to a study by inMarket, the use of beacons (Apple brands these as iBeacons, and has already shipped millions of capable devices) in retail stores caused a 19x increase in interactions with advertised products, a 16.5x increase in app usage in-store and a 6.4x increase in the likelihood that a shopper kept an app that sent them a beacon message on their phones.
Those stats are incredibly impressive. inMarket says it measures interactions in that customers are picking those physical products up and scanning barcodes. There’s no info about raw numbers, of course, but if those improvements could be tacked onto existing mobile efforts, marketers have a huge opportunity here.
InMarket, an ad platform that now focuses on mobile and beacons, rolled out one of the biggest networks of these proximity-sensitive devices to retail shoppers earlier this year and has continued to expand its installs. InMarket conducted the study in a controlled sample of 25,000 shoppers over 30 days in April and May of this year, using apps that had its Mobile to Mortar framework installed."

Misattribution of World Cup Sponsorship

"Two-fifths (38%) of UK, US and Brazilian consumers mistakenly think MasterCard is a World Cup sponsor, with rival credit card brands Visa scoring just 4% higher recognition at 42%, according to research from GlobalWebIndex.
Other brands not officially linked to the tournament but which scored high recognition as "sponsors", included Carlsberg in the UK. Budweiser is the official World Cup beer sponsor.
Non-sponsor Pepsi, which has been running football-themed advertising, scored the highest awareness as a World Cup "sponsor" among US consumers.
Nike, which last week launched a humorous five-minute animated epic, was selected as a sponsor by nearly a third of UK and US consumers. Meanwhile, a fifth of UK consumers also thought that Samsung is a FIFA sponsor.
MasterCard has not sponsored the World Cup since 2006, when it discontinued its 16-year association with the tournament.
On a more positive note for those brands forking out millions of pounds on sponsorship of the Brazil World Cup, Coca-Cola, a sponsor since 1978, and Adidas, a sponsor since 1970, gained the highest recognition as World Cup commercial partners.
Coke’s association proved the most resonant for consumers, with two-thirds of UK and US consumers selecting the brand.
Overall World Cup sponsor recognition levels were at their highest to date, particularly in the host nation, according to GlobalWebIndex.
The research project involved the firm asking members of its real-time panels in the UK, US and Brazil to identify sponsors. Respondents were asked to pick official World Cup sponsors from a list of 38 brands, both official sponsors and their non-sponsor rivals.
The research also examined respondents' media consumption, and found that 91% of real-time fans second-screen while watching TV, with mobiles the most popular device.
Other findings were that 87% of UK Twitter users will be watching the World Cup live on TV, with a sixth of them saying they have previously retweeted football-related content from brands."

Monday 16 June 2014

Over a third of online news users in 10 markets access news from their smartphones each week

"This year’s data provide further evidence of a new wave of disruption and change in digital news. In particular, we see mobile and social consumption reaching a new level of intensity, we see the different behaviours of young and old becoming more pronounced, and new kinds of journalistic organisation emerging.
The use of smartphones and tablets has jumped significantly in the past year, with fewer people using their computers for news. More than a third of online news users across all countries (39%) use two or more digital devices each week for news and a fifth (20%) now say the mobile phone is their primary access point.
The number of people paying for digital news has remained stable over the past 12 months, although we have seen a significant switch to more valuable ongoing digital subscription in most countries.
Our new (and unique) social media index for news shows Facebook is by far the most important network for news everywhere. Although Twitter is widely used in the US, Spain, and the UK, it is far less influential in many other European countries. Google+ is emerging as increasingly important for news, along with messaging application WhatsApp.
European respondents remain strongly committed to news that tries to be neutral (or impartial) but Americans are more interested in hearing from brands and reporters that are open about their own views and biases.
Traditional brands remain strong in most markets, with cross-platform newspaper reach averaging 75% in most countries, but pure players and aggregators are now more or as popular in the US, Japan, and Brazil.
US social sharing news sites like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Upworthy are beginning to make inroads around the world, with new formats and a fresh tone of voice aimed at younger people. Our survey shows a new category of weird news proving more/as popular than entertainment news.
Rapid Growth in Both Mobile and Tablet Use for News
Over the past year we have seen another significant jump in the adoption of both smartphones and tablets for news – as consumers embrace the benefits of smaller, personal, always-on devices. Germany and France have had a catch-up year, while others like Denmark have surged further ahead with 52% of the sample using a smartphone for news and 34% using a tablet on a weekly basis.
37% access news from smartphone each week
On average over a third of our global sample (37%) is accessing news from a smartphone each week and one in five (20%) from a tablet. In turn, this is driving more frequent access to news and from more locations."
Source:  Data from Reuters' Digital News Report 2014, conducted by YouGov, released June 2014
Note 1 - Lots more data available at the link.
Note 2 - Markets surveyed were US, UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Japan 

Apps (inc in-app browsing) account for over half of US internet time spent

Airbnb hosts 1 million guests a month


Note - Brian Chesky is Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb

Thursday 12 June 2014

Online ad spend in the US grew 19% Y-o-Y in Q1 2014

"Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. reached $11.6 billion for the first quarter of 2014, marking a 19 percent increase over the same period in 2013, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US. This is an historic first-quarter high and a significant increase over last year’s first-quarter revenue level, which was record-setting at $9.6 billion.
“Interactive advertising is seeing remarkable gains,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Digital screens are a critical part of the marketing mix and these landmark figures speak to that irrefutable fact.”
“These Q1 revenue levels speak to digital’s unique ability to identify the most relevant audience segments and deliver powerful results,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics & Measurement, IAB.
“With consumers increasingly relying on digital screens for everything from information to entertainment, numbers like these should come as no surprise,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US. “Interactive clearly offers a unique proposition for marketers and agencies – an opportunity they are embracing and will likely rely on more in the future.”"

Americas Digital Landscape


Tuesday 10 June 2014

The number of active web TV boxes in China grew by 50% in Q1 2014



Source: The Third Tier - Revealing China's Largest User Base from Umeng, 6th June 2014

500,000 jobs (ads) a month are posted on Twitter

"Fifteen new jobs are posted to Twitter every single minute, according to a new study by social recruiting company Gozaik, and that that number has grown by 32 percent in just the last six months.
That growth rate, Gozaik cofounder Joe Budzienski says, will make Twitter the “dominant channel” for talent recruitment.recruiting on Twitter
And it’s not just tech.
The biggest category of jobs that companies are recruiting on Twitter for is sales, at almost 25 percent, just edging out IT and other technology jobs. The other big category, surprisingly, is medical/dental, which accounts for almost 15 percent of all jobs posted on Twitter, Gozaik says, with jobs like anesthesiologist, orthodontist, and medical director."

Umeng's Chinese Mobile Trends


Monday 9 June 2014

Half of American households have a TV connected to the internet

"New consumer research from Leichtman Research Group (LRG) finds that 49 per cent of all US households have at least one television set connected to the Internet via a video game system, Blu-ray player, Smart TV set, and/or stand-alone device (such as Roku, Apple TV, or Google Chromecast) – up from 38 per cent in 2012, and 24 per cent in 2010. Overall, 24 per cent of adults watch video from the Internet via a Connected TV at least weekly, compared to 13 per cent two years ago, and 5 per cent four years ago.
Connected television use is heavily skewed towards Netflix subscribers, with 49 per cent of Netflix subscribers watching video from the Internet via a connected device weekly, compared to 8 per cent weekly use among all non-Netflix subscribers. Among Netflix streaming video users, 78 per cent say that they watch Netflix on a TV set — a similar level to the previous three years.
These findings are based on a survey of 1,211 households nationwide, and are part of a new LRG study, Emerging Video Services VIII.
Other related findings include:
80 per cent of all Netflix subscribers also subscribe to a pay-TV service – compared to 85 per cent in 2012, and 88 per cent in 2010
48 per cent of all non-subscribers to a pay-TV service get Netflix — compared to 29 per cent in 2012, and 16 per cent in 2010
15 per cent of Netflix subscribers agree that their Netflix subscription is shared with others outside their household
47 per cent of households get Netflix, Amazon Prime, and/or Hulu Plus
On a daily basis, 31 per cent of adults watch video on non-TV devices (including home computers, mobile phones, iPads, tablets, and eReaders), and 58 per cent weekly – up from 18 per cent daily, and 46 per cent weekly two years ago
Including Connected TV sets, 34 per cent watch any over-the-top video daily, and 61 per cent weekly"
Source:  Advanced Television, 9th June 2014
Note - This is the first study I've seen to include things like Chromecast in the broad definition of connected TV

Thursday 5 June 2014

Anna Todd's One Direction fan fiction has had over 800m views on Wattpad

"In the latest book acquisition to come from Wattpad, the popular online writing and reading community, Simon & Schusters’s Gallery Books imprint has acquired After, a three volume novel serialized on the site by Anna Todd, in a mid-six figure deal that includes world and audio rights. The new adult series was acquired by S&S’s Adam Wilson in an auction brokered by Wattpad’s head of content, publishing Ashleigh Gardner.
The first book in the three volume series will be released in print and e-book editions beginning in November 2014 with subsequent volumes released in January and March of 2015. The original version of the novel will remain on Wattpad.
Todd began writing After on Wattpad a little more than a year ago and the book has grown into a phenomenon attracting more than 800 million reads on the Wattpad site. The book has also garnered Todd a large following on social media. In April this year, Wattpad signed a deal with UTA, the talent agency, to represent film and TV rights for the novel."
Note - I'm assuming that 'reads' is Wattpad-speak for 'views'

83% of iPhone 5 owners use fingerprint scanning

"Touch ID, which only comes on Apple's latest flagship smartphone, but is rumored to come on the next version of the iPad, currently only works to unlock the phone and make purchases from Apple's App, iTunes and iBooks stores.
Touch ID isn't perfect. I like it, even though it doesn't always work for me. And there are certainly those who've given up on it completely. But before Touch ID, fewer than half of iPhone owners used a passcode on their phones, Apple said. Now, 83 percent do.
"Touch ID has been extremely popular," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, told a crowd of developers and reporters at Monday's annual developer's conference."
Source:  Huffington Post, 4th June 2014

Wednesday 4 June 2014

The rise of the sharing economy



Source:  Chart by Mashable & Statista from 2013 data from Nielsen, 3rd June 2014
See Nielsen's blog post here - 28th May 2014  (Why no chart Nielsen..?)
Note - it says 'the rise' but only includes data from 2013

Monday 2 June 2014

Ten facts about Twitter, restaurants and food

42% of European mobile shoppers say that they buy 'on impulse'

"More than 139.5 million Europeans now shop via mobile phone on a regular basis, with 42 per cent saying that they buy 'on impulse' compared to 25 per cent of non-mobile shoppers.
The study from ING looked at the shopping, lifestyle and saving habits of mobile bankers. It involved over 12,403 people using internet-based polling across Europe, with 990 respondents coming from the UK specifically.
Looking at what they are spending on, 23 per cent of items purchased on mobile were clothes, followed by electronics (21 per cent), games (12 per cent), holidays (11 per cent), music (11 per cent) and groceries (11 per cent).
Examining the rise of alternative payment methods, ING found that nearly half (49 per cent) of Europeans use physical cash less often than they did 12 months ago and 40 per cent claim they rarely use it.
A further 45 per cent of consumers predicted that they will use less cash in the next 12 months.
In the UK, 31 per cent of Britons now bank via a smartphone."

Candy Crush Saga generated more revenue in Q1 2014 than all of Nintendo's games combined

"Analysis of Newzoo’s latest ranking of public companies by game revenue reveals healthy industry growth, positive impact of next-gen consoles and continued rise of mobile game companies. The top 25 companies generated $12.9 billion in the first quarter of 2014 compared to $11.6 billion a year ago, an upwards jump of +11%. Microsoft and Sony both showed steady year-on-year growth in game revenues, following successful launches of their next-gen offerings, and continued revenues from current-gen games.
King’s $641million turnover puts it just behind Apple at number 7, based on its first quarter as a public company and debut in the Newzoo ranking. To put this performance into perspective: King generated 56% more game revenues than Nintendo, ranked at number 10, in the first quarter of 2014. Its flagship title, Candy Crush Saga, generates around two-thirds of King’s revenues which alone is more than all Nintendo game earnings in the first quarter put together. Of course, Nintendo’s strong fourth quarter is still to come but chances are in favor of King to end up above Nintendo for the full 2014 calendar year."

WhatsApp accounts for 18% of the sharing activity for the sports site FTW

"Publishers tend to focus their social media strategies around the twin titans of Facebook and Twitter. But perhaps they are ignoring WhatsApp at their own peril.
FTW, USA Today’s viral sports site, offers a good case study for the platform’s potential for publishers. Since introducing a WhatsApp sharing button to its mobile site a week ago, FTW has already seen WhatsApp shares climb to 18 percent of the site’s overall sharing activity. That’s higher than Twitter (13 percent) but still significantly lower than email (35 percent) and Facebook (34 percent)."

Amazon has 65% share of all US new book sales

"Research conducted in March by the Codex Group found that in the month Amazon's share of new book unit purchases was 41%, dominating 65% of all online new book units, print and digital. The company achieved that percentage by not only being the largest channel for e-books, where it had a 67% market share in March, but also by having a commanding slice of the sale of print books online, where its share in March was estimated at 64%."
Source:  Publishers Weekly, 28th May 2014
Note - while it doesn't explicitly say that it's US data, I'm assuming that it must be

Apple has sold more than 20 million Apple TVs

Sunday 1 June 2014

Gangnam Style by Psy is the first video to hit two billion views on YouTube

Achieved on 30th May 2014
Earlier - 1 billion on 21st December 2012