US online advertising spend rose 23.2% Y-o-Y in H1 2011

"Internet ad revenues rose 23.2 percent—to a record $14.9 billion—in the first half of 2011, according to figures released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC US). The rate of growth more than doubled year-over-year, as last year’s first-half ad revenues of $12.1 billion had represented an 11.3 percent increase over 2009.
Internet ad revenues for the second quarter alone also reached new heights, increasing 24.1 percent to $7.7 billion. That performance compares to last year’s same-period revenues of $6.2 billion, up 13.9 percent from 2009.
Display-related advertising—which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships—totaled more than $5.5 billion in the first six months of 2011. Display increased 27.1 percent over the same period in 2010, substantially exceeding the previous year’s growth rate of 16 percent. Digital video once again commanded double-digit growth—up 42.1 percent over a year ago, and moved close to the $1 billion mark with $891 million in half year 2011 revenue.
Display accounted for 37 percent of all interactive spend in the first half of 2011, with search remaining the leading online category at 49 percent of the total—nearly $7.3 billion. Search and Display each grew about 27 percent year-over-year, with Search more than doubling its previous year’s growth rate of 11.6 percent.
In other online ad formats, dollars spent on lead generation increased 25.4 percent over the same period in 2010, but classified ad dollars were down 2 percent and email spend decreased 34.2 percent.
IAB and PwC US looked at revenue models supporting online ads. Ads using performance-based models increased faster than ads using impression-based models, rising to $9.6 billion. Impression-based ad spend did grow by 10.8 percent, though that pricing model accounted for only 31 percent of total ads, down from 35 percent year-over-year."
Source:  Press release from the IAB, 28th September 2011

Facebook's share of time spent online in the US, by day of week

Click to enlarge

Source:  Data from Hitwise Experian, reported in their blog, 27th September 2011

Where US consumers spend their money

click to enlarge

Source:  Data for 2010 from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, reported by the New York Times, 27th September 2011

Propensity to engage in mCommerce in the UK

Click to enlarge

Source:  Data from MobileSquared, reported in a press release, 29th September 2011

Smartphone operating system shares in Europe

Click to enlarge

Source:  Press release from comScore, based on their MobiLens service, 13th September 2011
Based on UK, France, Germany, Italy & Spain only

Spotify gained a million new users after integration with the Facebook homepage ticker

"At f8 last Thursday, music services such as Spotify, Vevo, Rdio and Mog gained the ability to publish the listening activity of their users to Facebook’s new home page Ticker. The exposure to the friends of their users through the tickers has led to big gains for some music partners.
Most significantly, Spotify has gained one million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since f8 to reach 4.4 million MAU. It spiked from 1.12 million to 3.25 million daily active users the day after f8, and appears to be settling back to roughly a quarter million new DAU. Rdio, MOG, and Deezer have also seen significant gains in their numbers of Facebook-integrated users."
Source:  Data from Inside Facebook, collected from looking at app users, reported on 26th September 2011

The differences between hardcore social gamers and casual gamers

"The social gamer sector is a large, and growing, market – 41% of all U.S. Internet users have played social games.  That amounts to 98 million in the U.S. alone.
Hardcore Social Gamers resemble traditional core gamers demographically: While a majority of casual social gamers are women (61%) and over 40-years-old (62%), the reverse is true for hardcore social gamers: 55% of hardcore social gamers are male and 57% are under the age of 40 (with an average age of 37).
Hardcore Social Gamers are playing lots of games.  Hardcore social gamers tend to play multiple games simultaneously (76% playing two or more).  In fact, nearly half (47%) of hardcore social gamers are playing three or more social games, while 28% are playing 4 or more social games concurrently.  Clearly, these are dedicated game enthusiasts.
Hardcore Social Gamers exhibit greater level of gameplay engagement - The level of commitment and engagement of gamer segments varies.  When it comes to amount of gameplay time, hardcore social gamers far exceed casual social gamers.  This research indicates that 68% of hardcore social gamers are playing three or more hours per day of any game, with 30% playing social games for more than an hour per session.  By contrast, only 43% of casual social gamers spend three or more hours daily playing games of any type.  And, they play social games in short bursts – 54% indicate their typical session length is 30 minutes or less."
Source:  Press release from Kabam, 22nd September 2011
Note - A hardcore social gamer is defined as "players who play strategy, RPG, or other ‘core’ segment games (MMO, action, FPS, MOBA) on a social network site."
Full study here

Google Plus has an estimated 43m users

"If the algorithms are all working right, then Google+’s “unofficial statistician” Paul Allen believes that Google+ now has over 43 million users. Allen, whose name you might know as being the founder of Ancestry.com has a method whereby he estimates the total number of users on Google+ based upon uncommon surnames.
In the past, according to PlusHeadlines, Allen has been startlingly accurate:
July 4th – 1.7 million users
July 9th – 4.5 million users
July 12 – 10 million users
September 9th – 28.7 million users
September 22nd – 43.4 million users
These numbers tie up almost exactly with confirmed reports that we’ve seen in the past, as well as our own findings from Google employees."

Source:  The Next Web, 22nd September 2011

Facebook has more than 800m active users (full stats)

"People on Facebook
More than 800 million active users
More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
Activity on Facebook
There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
More than 2 billion posts are liked and commented on per day
On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day
Global Reach
More than 70 languages available on the site
More than 75% of users are outside of the United States
Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
Platform
On average, people on Facebook install apps more than 20 million times every day
Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites
More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook
Mobile
There are more than 350 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
There are more than 475 mobile operators globally working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"
Source:  Facebook Statistics, retrieved 27th September 2011

Android accounts for over 50% of the mobile ad impressions on the Millenial Media mobile network

"Today, we released our August Mobile Mix Report, and for the first time, we combined smartphones and connected devices when breaking down impressions on our network by operating system. When looking at both connected devices and smartphones, we saw that Android had a 54 percent share and iOS had a 28 percent share."

Source:  Blog post from Millennial Media, 23rd September 2011

Instagram has 10m users

"Last October, we launched Instagram live in the App Store. Today, less than one year later, we’re happy to announce that the Instagram community now consists of over 10 million registered users.
As we prepare to celebrate our first year in the App Store, we’d like to extend our thanks to each and every one of the ten million folks who have taken the time to participate in Instagram by sharing small moments of life through gorgeous mobile photos."
Source:  Blog post by Instagram, 26th September 2011

5 of the top 10 markets where most time is spent on social networking sites are in Latin America

"Latin Americans are strongly engaged with social networking. Half of the top 10 worldwide markets ranked by time spent on social networking sites are in Latin America, with Argentina leading the region at 10 hours per month in June 2011.
The Latin American social networking audience is nearly equal in its composition of males and females, but females account for a larger share of social networking time spent (53.6 percent) compared to males (46.4 percent). This trend was most significant in Brazil where females accounted for 58.7 percent of all social networking time spent.
People age 15-24 demonstrated the strongest engagement on social networks, accounting for nearly half (48.0 percent) of all time spent in the category. This trend was most significant in Venezuela where visitors age 15-24 accounted for 3 of every 5 social networking minutes (58.2 percent).
Facebook.com strongly led the social networking market in Latin America, reaching more than 91 million visitors. Windows Live Profile ranked #2 with more than 35.5 million visitors in the region. Orkut held the #3 spot with 34.4 million visitors, largely driven by the site’s popularity in Brazil, while Twitter.com ranked #4 with 24.3 million visitors.
Five of the top 10 markets ranked by Facebook.com reach are in Latin America. Facebook reached 90.9 percent of all online users in Chile, ranking as the most penetrated market in Latin America.
In Brazil, Orkut ranked as the most-visited social networking destination, reaching 35.7 million visitors, an increase of 20 percent from June 2010. Facebook.com, which is the second largest social networking site in Brazil, witnessed strong growth increasing 192 percent to 24.5 million visitors.
Venezuela is the only country in Latin America in which Twitter.com rises to second place in the social networking ranking. One in four online users in Venezuela visited Twitter.com in June (26.5 percent reach).
Recently launched Google+ reached 28 million visitors worldwide in the first 33 days of its public existence (June 29, 2011 to July 31, 2011). Brazil ranked as the sixth largest market for the site globally, contributing 793,923 visitors."
Source:  Press release from comScore, 20th September 2011