Monday 30 March 2015

Daily screen time by 8 year old boys in UK has risen from 2.7 hours to 5.5 hours in 20 years

"Stretching back to 1995, Childwise found that on average, eight-year-old boys watched 2.7 hours of TV per day. Whereas in 2015, screen time had expanded to include new platforms and jumped to 5.5 hours (2.3 hours watching TV, 1.3 hours on internet, 1.5 hours on console, 0.4 hours on mobile).
For eight-year-old girls, screen time in 1995 also consisted of 2.7 hours spent watching TV daily. Meanwhile this year, the same age group logged 3.8 hours of screen time (2.1 hours watching TV, 0.8 hours on internet, 0.6 hours on console, 0.3 hours on mobile).
With stats like this, the report predicts future generations will be more likely to access content like TV shows via tablet or phablet, rather than a traditional TV set, laptop or PC.
Thanks to the popularity of the tablet with this demo, the device is likely to reach similar ownership levels as smartphones, and ownership of laptops and PCs is predicted to fall.
As more kids own these portable devices (which can be difficult for parents to regulate), protecting kids from inappropriate content online will be a continuing issue going forward.
In addition, the report found that traditional social networks like Facebook will continue to decline in popularity, while photo and video-sharing sites like YouTube, Instagram and SnapChat gain traction with young people.
On the mobile phone front, the study suggests these devices will become a hub, used to coordinate other tech devices. For example, kids will use their phones to interact with the television, either indirectly through second-screen viewing or as a controller.
Looking at the next five years, Childwise predicts there will be a convergence of technology currently in use. Some children may choose phablets instead of the current combo of phone and tablet/laptop. Televisions are likely to be increasingly connected to the internet, allowing for streaming of content from portable devices to the big screen.
Over the next 10 years, these digital natives are likely to find household appliances that cannot be controlled by smartphone, or some kind of online dashboard, outdated and/or increasingly rare. The report also suggests that wearable technology will have progressed significantly by this point."
Source:  Press release from Childwise, 27th March 2015

Only 6% of iPhone 6 users have used Apple Pay

"Six months since the launch of Apple Pay, only 6 percent of iPhone 6 owners have used Apple Pay and 85 percent of people with access to Apple Pay have never used it, according to a report by InfoScout and PYMNTS.
The new stats were revealed at PYMNTS.com Innovation Project 2015 mobile payments conference. The survey drew on 1,188 participants over a three-day period last week.
Consumers who don’t use Apple Pay reported that they were happy with their current payment method and/or didn’t understand how Apple Pay worked. About 9 percent of iPhone 6 owners have played around with Apple Pay, but haven’t actually used it. They say they either forget to use it in stores or were unsure about where it was accepted."
Note - I'm assuming this research is US only - as Apple Pay is only available in the US it would be a completely different story if only 6% of global users had ever used it

China's video company Youku Tudou gets 900m video views a day

"China’s top online video company just released new data in its latest earnings report (for Q4 2014). In terms of eyeballs, Youku Tudou now gets 900 million video views each day – an all-time high that has tripled since October 2013.
The company, which runs two video sites, Youku and Tudou, after their merger in 2012, didn’t disclose an updated figure for monthly unique visitors (that was 500 million back in Q2 2014), but a Youku representative tells Tech in Asia that the sites now get 150 million daily active users."

The top 3 Messenger Apps in 5 markets



Source:  OnDevice Research, 18th March 2015

Ads on Waze led to a 53% uplift in likelihood to visit a location

"Brands such as Wells Fargo and Dunkin’ Donuts are discovering that users of navigational application Waze are more likely to drive to a retail location after seeing associated Pins or Takeovers.
Waze has released its first set of efficacy studies and also found a lift in ad recall for users exposed to brands’ Pins and Takeovers, two marketing offerings available on the app. One advertiser, Wells Fargo, found that Waze users exposed to an offer for a free credit report were more likely to visit a branch.
“For Wells Fargo, the bank wanted to reach consumers close to Wells Fargo locations, and track branch visits by Waze users,” said Sara Hall, product marketing manager for ads at Waze.
“Waze showed a huge lift in navigations to branch in the exposed group vs. a control,” she said.
“We were also able to test for ad recall, showing that Waze users remembered seeing the Free Credit Report offer.”
[...]
Waze compared the driving behavior of a group exposed to a particular brand’s ad to those were not exposed to the ad.
Specifically, Waze compared the frequency with which users searched for and navigated to the advertiser's locations before and after ad exposure in the case of the exposed group and before and after the start of the campaign in the case of the control.
The average navigational lift was 53 percent for those exposed to the ad. In multiple cases, exposed users were more than twice as likely to navigate to a business as a direct result of seeing associated Pins and or Takeovers."

WhatsApp handled 7 trillion messages in 2014 - nearly 1,000 for every person on the planet

"The time users are spending on messaging services has encouraged investors to value them highly, even though it is not yet clear how some of them will make money—much as happened with the rise of Twitter and with Facebook’s original service, its social network. WhatsApp handled more than seven trillion messages last year, about 1,000 per person on the planet. In Britain users spent as much time on WhatsApp as on Facebook’s social-networking app, according to Forrester, another research firm. In China subscribers to WeChat are estimated to use the app for about 1,100 minutes a month on average."
Source:  The Economist, 28th March 2015

Thursday 19 March 2015

Over 350m 'stickers' are shared each day on Facebook

"Over 350 million Facebook ‘stickers’ – illustrations or animations of characters – are shared everyday on the platform, signalling a new way of communicating that brands have yet to harness, according to Facebook VP EMEA Nicola Mendelsohn.
Speaking at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, Mendelsohn said the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than words and this has seen an increasing number of users develop a “succinct visual language” to sustain pace in an increasingly busy world.
“Think of this as the next generation of ‘LOL’, where images replace words,” she said."

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Crossy Road has made $10m from 50m downloads in 90 days

"Today, at a Game Developers Conference 2015 session, Hall and Sum told the story of Crossy Road's creation and lifted the veil on its real success during the game's first three months. They revealed that, 90 days after its release, Crossy Road's combination of solid gameplay, unobtrusive in-app purchases, and optional in-app ads powered by the Unity engine, has earned $10 million from 50 million downloads."
Source:  Polygon, 3rd March 2015

Facebook has over 3bn video views a day

"If it’s starting to feel like every visit you make to Facebook these days is full of videos, you are not alone. Facebook today reported in a strong set of Q4 earnings that there are 3 billion videos viewed on its site each day. With the company also reporting daily active users of 890 million, this works out to more than 3 videos per day.
Facebook more specifically later noted that over 50% of people in the US who come to Facebook daily watch at least one video per day. It doesn’t break out how many of those are auto-played but did noted that over 65% of Facebook video views occur on mobile.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed out in the call that while usage of Facebook has shifted over the last ten years, from primarily text through to “primarily photos with some text and video,” he may be understating things a bit.
As a point of comparison, he noted that there are 2 billion photos each day shared across Facebook sites — or, put another way, 1 billion less photos than videos posted to Facebook daily. And as a sign of just how much Facebook is pushing video growth, it was only in June 2014 that the company passed 1 billion video views per day.
“One of the big trends will be the growth of video content on our service,” Zuckerberg said in remarks about the how the service would look in three, five and 10 years."
Source:  Techcrunch, 28th January 2015
Earlier - 1 billion announced 7th September 2014
(What's the betting it's nearer to 5bn views now..?)

300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute - Full Stats

"Product
YouTube has more than 1 billion users
Every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views
The number of hours people are watching on YouTube each month is up 50% year over year
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
~60% of a creator’s views comes from outside their home country
YouTube is localized in 75 countries and available in 61 languages
Half of YouTube views are on mobile devices
Mobile revenue on YouTube is up over 100% y/y
Advertising
More than a million advertisers are using Google ad platforms, the majority of which are small businesses
85% of our TrueView in-stream ads are skippable
Google Preferred has been a huge success - we’ve secured upfront commitments from many of the top agencies including OMG, Digitas, IPG, Carat and SMG, and sold out the majority of our product offering
Top YouTube creators were found to be more popular than mainstream celebrities among U.S. teenagers (Variety)
Investing in Our Creators
Partner revenue is up over 50% from 2013 to 2014 (10/10/14)
We’ve been investing in our creators:
Opened YouTube Spaces in Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, New York and Sao Paulo, so far bringing in 60k+ people who’ve created over 6500 videos that have generated more than 50 million hours of watch time, the equivalent of more than 5,700 years
Launched multimedia promotional campaigns highlighting top creators on YouTube in 7 countries around the world, increasing awareness for those featured by up to 4x
Of the 100+ channels we funded in 2011 — 86 of those channels are in the top 1% of all YouTube channels, 25 have 1+ million subscribers, and collectively they’re getting over 3/4 billion views a month
More than a million channels in dozens of countries are earning revenue from the YouTube Partner Program, and thousands of channels are making six figures per year
We’ve invested tens of millions of dollars into Content ID, our copyright management system. The result is that since 2007 we've paid out over $1 billion to partners who have chosen to monetize their claims using Content ID."

Monday 16 March 2015

Apple Pay is accepted at 700,000 US locations, inc 50,000 Coca Cola vending machines

"Apple’s mobile payment system Apple Pay is now accepted in 700,000 U.S. locations, including 50,000 Coke vending machines, CEO Tim Cook announced at the company’s product event today in San Francisco. The system allows users to tap their iPhone or Apple Watch against the permanent terminal at select stores to pay without the need to use a credit or debit card or cash.
While the number Cook cited today is impressive, it really is just a reminder of how good Apple’s timing was in launching this system. You see, in order for a store to accept Apple Pay, its payment terminal has to include a technology called near field communication, or NFC. A bunch of retail chains already had the technology, allowing Apple to easily launch with hundreds of thousands of partners."

Videos created by Buzzfeed generate over 1bn views a month

"Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, a division of the Buzzfeed media company, announced in an internal memo Thursday that its videos have accumulated 1 billion monthly views.
The news comes just six months after the Motion Pictures division, located in Hollywood, launched as a way to expand the media company's growing video division.
"Back in September of 2012, there were five of us and we were experimenting with formats for a single YouTube channel," Ze Frank, President of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, told The Times. "Now we have a team of over 160 employees. We distribute roughly 50 videos each week to more than 20 platforms and portals around the world."
The company focuses on creating any and all moving images, from animated GIFs to feature films. Though short-form videos continue to be one of the more important variables for testing formats and genres, Buzzfeed Motion Pictures has also recently expanded into unscripted medium-form content and serialized formats with developed characters and story lines.
For example, BuzzFeed Violet, a channel created by the company last July, features staffers Andrew Ilnyckyj and Ashley Perez in short but popular videos such as “Creepy Ways to Ask If She's Single,” “Weird Things You Do When You Have a Crush,” “How 'Likes' Would Work in Real Life” and “Randomly Seeing a Person You Know.”
An estimated 5% of the company's video traffic stems from BuzzFeed.com. The rest of the views come from the syndicated platforms Buzzfeed's videos are on, including YouTube, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo."

WhatsApp has had more than 1bn downloads on Android

Friday 13 March 2015

Uber has 160,000 active drivers in the US

"Ride-hailing company Uber announced plans Tuesday to create 1 million jobs for women as drivers in the next five years — offering a rare peek into its growth plans.
In the U.S., where Uber got its start six years ago, the company boasts 160,000 active drivers. Fourteen percent of them are women.
Globally, the number of drivers is less clear, but Uber boasts "hundreds of thousands" of driver partners around the world, Uber spokeswoman Kristin Carvell told USA TODAY.
Even if one conservatively assumes that Uber has as many as 900,000 drivers in the 55 countries where it operates, and that 50% of those drivers could be women in 2020 — Tuesday's announcement suggests that Uber expects to at least double its growth over the next five years."

Mobile & Tablets account for 34% of all online video views

"Ooyala, a Telstra subsidiary and specialist in video publishing, analytics and monetisation, has issued its Q4 2014 Global Video Index Report, revealing mobile and tablets now represent more than one third of all online viewing, and providing the first analysis of advertising data from Ooyala’s recently acquired video ad-tech company, Videoplaza.
The report pairs insights on ad impressions, fill rates and ad completions across all devices, derived from a sampling of Europe’s top broadcasters and publishers, with Ooyala’s global video viewing data from 220 million unique viewers around the world. The quarterly analysis underscores monetisation opportunities and engagement trends in over-the-top video.
Mobile and tablets achieved record growth this quarter, touting 34 per cent of all online video views. That’s roughly double the number of plays in Q4 2013, more than five times the number of plays in 2012 and 16 times the number of mobile and tablet plays since Ooyala’s first iteration of the Global Video Index Report. This represents the thirteenth consecutive report that mobile and tablet viewership has surmounted the previous quarter’s record."

Buzzfeed published nearly 70,000 articles in 2014

"We wrote a simple crawler (see code) using the Priceonomics Analysis Engine, our tool that makes it easy to crawl and analyze web data, and then analyzed what the sources were used for the images that BuzzFeed includes in their articles.  In the last year, BuzzFeed published about 69,000 articles, included 830,000 images/videos with attribution strings, and linked to approximately 74,000 distinct sources.
However, just 25 sources made up 62% of BuzzFeed’s content. While the Internet is a huge place, Internet Culture is birthed in just a few areas. What are these sources?
The number one place that BuzzFeed sources its images from is Tumblr. This is where The Dress was discovered. Instagram, Getty Images, and Youtube round out the top 4. This analysis isn’t perfect, however, as it ignores content that BuzzFeed embeds without putting an attribution link under it (Twitter embeds for example don’t need an attribution link since they are clearly from Twitter). A number of these sites simply provide stock photos."
Note - This works out to nearly 200 articles a day, which seems high, but will include all the editions of Buzzfeed, plus amateur 'community' posts.

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Domino's Pizza has taken half a million orders through it's 'voice ordering' app

"Domino’s Pizza’s virtual ordering assistant Dom, which lets consumers dictate orders via mobile devices while on-the-go, has reached a half-million orders since its 2014 launch, suggesting that more food brands should consider investing in voice ordering technology.
The mobile application was created to increase personalization as more consumers turn to digital channels to place orders for food and beverage items. Although Domino’s does also offer customers the ability to order via a mobile Web site or the brand’s app, Dom’s catchphrases have proven to be popular and have contributed to the company’s milestone of 50 percent of sales coming from digital platforms."

The US accounted for over a third of global ad spend in 2014

"The global advertising market surpassed a half-trillion dollars in 2014 totaling $525 billion with the top 10 countries accounting for nearly three-quarters of global advertising spend, according to a report from Strategy Analytics entitled Global Advertising Market Forecast Outlook.
The US alone accounted for over a third of global ad spend in 2014, 3.8 times higher than the second largest market, China, and over 16 times larger than Canada, the 10th largest market. Meanwhile China surpassed Japan in 2013 to become the second largest advertising market and will surpass Germany (4th largest market) and the UK (5th largest market) markets combined in 2015.
The US also has by far the largest TV advertising market. In 2014 it was nearly 5 times larger than China, the second largest market."
Source:  Advanced Television, 4th March 2015
Note - Press release from Strategy Analytics here

Image showing top 10 markets below


US smartphone users use an average of 7-8 apps a month



"Parks Associates announced smartphone and tablet research at Mobile World Congress today showing app users regularly use nearly 8 apps on their smartphone and nearly 7 apps on their tablet. The average user spends 3.3 hours per week using social networking apps on a smartphone, while gaming and music apps score 2.7 and 2.6 hours per week, respectively. Fourteen percent of smartphone users and 26% of tablet users do not regularly use an app."

Source:  Press release from Parks Associates, 4th March 2015

1.2 billion smartphones were sold in 2014

"Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users had a record fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung lost the No. 1 spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014 (see Table 1). Samsung had been in the top spot since 2012.
In 2014, sales of smartphones to end users totaled 1.2 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013 (see Table 2) and represented two-thirds of global mobile phone sales.
"Samsung's performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further in the fourth quarter of 2014, when it lost nearly 10 percentage points in market share," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013. This downward trend shows that Samsung's share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure.""

6% of workers in the UK are in jobs that didn't exist in 1990

"The transformation of the workforce is rapidly expanding beyond London as the UK embraces the digital economy, with about 1.8m people — 6 per cent of workers — now employed in a type of job that did not even exist in 1990.
In central London 10 per cent of workers are employed in jobs that did not exist in 1990 but regional cities are rapidly embracing new careers, according to PwC’s 2015 economic outlook. Official classifications have added 1,500 job titles since then."

Tuesday 10 March 2015

30,000 people signed a petition to have an official 'Taco' emoji created

"But brands looking to take advantage of this trend need to understand the difference between emojis and emoticons or stickers. The emoji keyboard, which now comes standard on many smartphones, is comprised of various emojis approved by the Unicode Consortium. Brands looking to create their own emoticons and stickers have to make their own apps or partner with messaging apps like Kik, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to have their branded emoticons available for consumer use.
Taco Bell recently lobbied the Unicode Consortium to add a taco emoji to its keyboard. The brand circulated a Change.org petition that's secured 30,000 signatures. So why not create its own emoticons or stickers instead of waiting for the Unicode Consortium to add a taco emoji? "We didn't go create our own app because people use the emojis natively already," explained Taco Bell rep Ashley Sioson. "We want it to be a natural tie-in to how the user already uses emojis.""
Source:  AdWeek, 9th March 2015
See the petition here

UK TV ad spend grew 6% to £4.9bn in 2014

"The UK advertising market continues to grow from strength to strength following a 6 per cent increase in sales last year to reach £4.91bn – the fifth consecutive year of growth to be enjoyed by the sector.
Compiled by Thinkbox the latest batch of figures was boosted by the growth of online brands such as Amazon, Google and Netflix with online brands and services doubling investment in the sector to over £400m since 2010.
The market was also given a lift by 800 new and returning advertisers who took linear spots, sponsorship, broadcaster VOD, and product placement packages in 2014. Their combined output saw the average commercial TV viewer exposed to 45 ads whilst watching 2 hours and 25 minutes of content each day."

WPP spent nearly $3bn on Google ads in 2014

"WPP, the world's largest advertising company, has just revealed Google is its biggest partner, in terms of where it plugs its clients' advertising money. And it's WPP's biggest media partner by quite some way.
Speaking on the company's fourth quarter earnings call, WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell gave some interesting nuggets about the company's media outlay last year.
"Google has become our biggest media partner," he said. Last year WPP invested $2.9 billion of its $75 billion media bookings into Google ads."

Wednesday 4 March 2015

Nearly 50% of video viewed on TV by US broadband households is from non-linear sources

"Glenn Hower, Research Analyst at Parks Associates, will participate in the pre-event workshop interactive session “A Glimpse behind the Curtain of Connected TV” at 2015 ANA Media Leadership Conference on March 4 in Hollywood, Florida.
The session will address connected TV, pay TV, and the advertising opportunities that are arising for marketers. Parks Associates research reveals that U.S. broadband households watch on average 36.2 hours of video per week, and 65% of all video consumed was on a television.  Almost half (49%) of video viewed on the television was from non-linear sources (DVR, Internet video, VOD, PPV, DVD/Blu-ray), up from 38% in Q4 2010.
“Consumers still want the big-screen experience, and the decline in linear viewing tells us that consumers want that experience on their own terms,” Hower said. “Despite the ability to watch content on almost any connected device with a screen, the television remains the central video viewing device for consumers. However, the sources for that video content are changing pretty dramatically.”"

5% of US broadband households use a smart watch with health & fitness tracking

"Research firm Parks Associates announced today that 5% of U.S. broadband households use a smart watch with health and fitness tracking functions, while 8% use a digital pedometer or fitness/activity tracker. Tejas Mehta, Parks Associates’ research analyst covering the mobile and wearable markets, is attending Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona to support the event and share the firm’s insights in wearable technology adoption trends and mobile consumer research.
“Though increased adoption of smartphones is fueling the mobile revolution that includes wearable devices, consumers' all-encompassing desire to use smartphones in all aspects of their lives is creating a dilemma for wearable OEMs,” Mehta said. “In the case of smart watches, these devices are regularly marketed as companion or ‘tethered’ smart products. Companies need to rally consumer interest in smart watches by educating them on the unique experiences and benefits of these and other wearables. Otherwise, the majority of consumers may not see the reason to purchase another device that has similar, if not the same, capabilities as their smartphone.”"
Note - I'm not completely sure that there are enough smart watches in circulation for 5% of broadband homes to use one...

The iPhone accounts for 89% of all smartphone hardware profits


Source:  Strategy Analytics, reported by Apple insider, 26th February 2015

One quarter of newly installed Android apps are uninstalled within 10 minutes

"The make-or-break phase for a newly installed app on an Android device is the first 10 minutes, according to Kantar mobile behavioral data. One-quarter of Android users who installed new apps proceeded to uninstall them within that brief stretch of time. Once the 10-minute mark passes, the inclination to uninstall becomes much more diffuse, happening over days.
Of Kantar's total sample of 12,971 Android users whose mobile behavior was tracked (anonymously and with consent, of course) between January and October 2014, 26% installed, then uninstalled the same app within 10 minutes. Another 6% did so during the next 50 minutes, meaning a total of 32% installed then uninstalled within an hour. And yet another 6% installed then uninstalled within the following 23 hours, for a total of 38% who ditched that new app within one day of installation.
For games specifically, Android device users hang on far longer to games they paid for, an average of 31 days, than they hang onto games they downloaded for free: an average of 15 days.
KEY NUMBERS
31 days - Average lifespan of a paid game app
15 days - Average life span of a free game app"
Source:  Kantar US Insights, 26th February 2015

Facebook has 2 million active advertisers

"This is a moment to celebrate all the incredible entrepreneurs like you who are creating value for their communities.
Courtney, a mom in North Carolina who started The Produce Box, a company delivering fresh food that now provides a market for more than 40 farmers across the state.
Shubhra and Vivek, married Indian entrepreneurs who sold their house to raise the money to start Chumbak, an accessories company that now employs more than 150 people.
Thiago, a Brazilian man in the Amazon who turned his passion for making chocolate into Brigadore Brigadeiros Gourmet, a chain of stores and a national brand.
KaYoung, a young woman in South Korea who used her law school tuition money to launch HotelNow, a service for finding last-minute hotel rooms, that is now expanding across Asia.
And there are more than two million other inspiring stories of people working to grow their businesses. You’re creating jobs, sharing new ideas and inspiring all of us to dream big."

Monday 2 March 2015

YouTube 'breaks even on revenues of $4bn a year'

"Google Inc. nurtured YouTube into a cultural phenomenon, attracting more than one billion users each month. Still, YouTube hasn’t become a profitable business.
The online-video unit posted revenue of about $4 billion in 2014, up from $3 billion a year earlier, according to two people familiar with its financials, as advertiser-friendly moves enticed some big brands to spend more. But while YouTube accounted for about 6% of Google’s overall sales last year, it didn’t contribute to earnings. After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is “roughly break-even,” according to a person with knowledge of the figure.
By comparison, Facebook Inc. generated more than $12 billion in revenue, and nearly $3 billion in profit, from its 1.3 billion users last year."