The Boycott of The Sun in Merseyside 'has led to lower levels of Euroscepticism'

"The report, authored by London School of Economics behavioural political scientist Florian Foos and Zurich University’s Daniel Bischof, says the long-standing Sun boycott lowered Euroscepticism among the “unskilled” working class who “made up a large share of Sun readers before the disaster”.
The report said “attitudes towards the EU got significantly more positive in Merseyside during the boycott”.
Liverpool, The Wirral and Sefton in Merseyside all voted Remain.
The study, which used data from the annual British Social Attitudes survey and is available online, added: “…the boycott of the most important Eurosceptic newspaper – The Sun in Merseyside as a consequence of The Sun’s reporting on the Hillsborough sporting disaster – led to a decrease of Euroscepticism in Merseyside, which we estimate to amount to around 11 percentage points.
“Moreover, our results suggest that The Sun boycott in Merseyside might have decreased the Leave vote share in Merseyside in the 2016 EU referendum.”
The authors said the study showed “sustained media campaigns on emerging issues can have large, lasting, and ultimately, consequential effects on public opinion, and public policy”."
Source:  Press Gazette, 27th August 2019

Addressable TV advertising is more engaging and more effective

"To understand the impact of addressable TV on both consumer viewing and ad engagement, Sky Media partnered with BVA BDRC, Differentology and Affectiva to measure the impact of addressable TV campaigns using AdSmart. The extensive study included ground-breaking facial coding and emotional analytics. Findings are based on more than 130 campaign effectiveness projects, in which 300,000 Sky subscribers were interviewed. The research reveals:
Addressable drives ad engagement. Facial recognition analysis revealed that when addressable ads are on TV, viewers’ attentiveness to the screen can be as a third higher (35%) and on average 21% more engaged.
Addressable cuts channel switching during ads. An analysis using 52,000 ad breaks showed that channel switching was halved (reducing by 48%) when addressable ads were in the first three positions of a break, compared to standard linear TV ads.
Addressable increases spontaneous ad recall. Viewers of addressable TV ads are 10% more likely to spontaneously recall an ad compared to linear TV advertising.
Addressable is amplified when combined with linear. Combining linear with addressable TV advertising increases ad awareness by nearly a quarter (22%). When the frequency of addressable ads is equal or higher to linear exposure ad recall is boosted by half (49%).
Addressable works. Higher engagement and relevance have clear business results, increasing purchase intent by 7% overall and by as much as 20% for new to Tv advertisers who benefit more from the exposure and credibility TV delivers.
Tangible business results for new to TV brands. Local brands like Gasway (35%) and Richardson’s Garden Centre (17%) among 100s of businesses seeing significant business growth through the use of addressable TV advertising."
Source:  Data from Sky, reported in a press release, 15th August 2019

More than 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube each minute

"Your average person could spend their entire lifetime trying to watch all the content uploaded to YouTube in just one day.
The platform’s users upload more than 500 hours of fresh video per minute, YouTube revealed at recent press events. That works out to 30,000 hours of new content per hour, and 720,000 hours of new content per day.
Divide 720,000 out, and you’ll see that 82.2 years — yes, years — of new video are uploaded to YouTube each and every day.
This is the first per-minute upload amount we’ve gotten from YouTube since VidCon 2015, where CEO Susan Wojcicki revealed that 400 hours were being uploaded every minute. (That works out to 65.7 years’ worth each day, FYI.) In 2013, a third-party report from Tubular Labs estimated 300 hours were being uploaded.
While these upload amounts are staggering, they’re actually slim compared to the watch time stats YouTube’s also revealed recently. At the NewFronts last week, the platform said more than 250 million hours of content are watched just on TV screens each day. That works out to 173,611 hours being watched per minute — compared to the 500 being uploaded. And that 250 million hours doesn’t even include browser and mobile viewing, for which YouTube hasn’t broken out exact numbers."
Source:  TubeFilter, 7th May 2019

4.7m people in the UK work in the gig economy

"Last month, new data on the U.K.’s gig economy surfaced from the University of Hertfordshire, concluding that the number of gig workers in Britain has more than doubled in the last three years, now reaching 4.7 million professionals.
Experts say the explosion of technology platforms like Uber and Deliveroo ushered in waves of opportunity for professionals to have greater control over when, where and how they work. The U.K.’s Trades Union Congress, however, sees this surge in gig workers from a different angle."
Source:  PYMNTS, 1st August 2019

Over 2.1 billion people use Facebook's apps on a daily basis

"Facebook said over 2.1 billion people now use its family of applications—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger—on a daily basis, and more than 2.7 billion do so on a monthly basis.
Facebook reported an average of 1.59 billion daily active users at the end of the second quarter, up 8% compared with the year-ago period. Wehner said gains in India, Indonesia and the Philippines helped drive growth."

Source:  AdWeek, 26th July 2019

The median age of golf fans is 64, EPL is 43, and eSports is 25

"The median age of golf fans is 64, for English Premier League football it is 43 and for eSports it’s 25. Fortnite skews even younger, for both fans and participants: the average age of the players on stage is 16."

Source:  Data quoted by the FT, 3rd August 2019

All of the top 100 players at the Twitch World Cup were male

"This weekend the best Fortnite players in the world gathered at Flushing Meadows in New York to compete in the game’s first ever World Cup Finals for $30m (£24m) in prize money. Tens of thousands of spectators packed the famed Arthur Ashe stadium to watch the action live, and many millions more viewed on Twitch and YouTube. Fortnite is, after all, one of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet, played by hundreds of millions. Amid all the hype and fanfare around the finals, however, one depressing fact remained unavoidable: not a single one of the 100 finalists was female."

Source:  The Guardian, 29th July 2019

Twitch accounts for 70% of US live-streamed video

"Twitch is the No. 1 platform for streaming live video, accounting for 70% of all livestreamed hours watched during Q2 2019, per a study by StreamElements. The Amazon-owned platform experienced its first decline in viewing time with a 2% drop to 2.72 billion hours in Q2 from Q1, but still had a greater share of the market than YouTube Live (20%), Facebook Gaming (5.3%) and Microsoft's Mixer (3%).
Most of Twitch's viewing time was centered on the platform's top 5,000 streamers, which collectively generated 2 billion hours of viewing time in Q2. Popular streamers Tfue, Shroud and Ninja were in the top five every month during the quarter, while LIRIK, Asmongold and xQcOW appeared in the top five for the first time in 2019, per the study.
Streamers generated 76% of the viewing time among the top 200 channels on Twitch, compared with 24% for esports events such as the Overwatch League, ESL and Riot Games. Most viewers tend to watch popular esports games like Overwatch and League of Legends outside of a professional setting like a tournament, StreamElements' study found."
Source:  Mobile Marketer, 15th July 2019
Note - It doesn't specifically say US viewing, but I think that this is implied

31% of US households don't have broadband

"Over the past several years, many have suggested that broadband internet should be regarded as a public utility, like water or gas. Staying connected has become an essential part of nearly every facet of life, but according to a new report, high-speed connections may not be as prevalent here in the States as you may think.
In its new Rural America and Technology study, NPD notes that 31% of U.S. households don’t have broadband (25Mbps downloads and up) internet connections. The number works out to roughly 100 million per the report. That figure, unsurprisingly, is highly concentrated in rural areas — less than one-fifth of that population has a broadband connection.
While broadband was considered something of a luxury in the not so distant past, it’s grown into an increasingly essential aspect of modern existence, from work to health to entertainment. The concentration of access to the technology in urban versus rural areas has been a major aspect in what analysts have referred to as the “digital divide.” Rural areas make up nearly 97% of the total U.S. land."

Source:  Techcrunch, 25th July 2019

8.3m people in the UK watched England win the Cricket World Cup

"Sky and Channel 4’s shared FTA coverage of the Cricket World Cup final on July 14th – which saw England beat New Zealand in the competition’s first ever ‘super over’ – drew a combined TV audience of 8.3 million.
Sky’s Chief Executive UK and Ireland Stephen van Rooyen said: “Congratulations to England and everyone who has been part of the journey at the ECB. The ICC put on a terrific tournament. We’ve been proud host broadcasters of a home cricket World Cup, dedicating a channel and showing every single minute, which has been absorbing from the first ball to the unforgettable final delivery. Sunday saw a peak across Sky and Channel 4 of 8.3 million – a huge audience for a huge moment for British sport. On Sky’s channels our peak was 3.5 million alone, a fitting way to cap a terrific tournament.”"
Source:  Advanced Television, 15th July 2019

WhatsApp has 400m MAUs in India

"Messaging service WhatsApp has been in the middle of a number of controversies since last year, ranging from the proliferation of fake news to storing data locally, even as it looks to expand into digital payments.
These controversies come at a time when its parent company Facebook, which also owns Instagram and Messenger, has been under scrutiny across the world over privacy of user data, and also agreed to pay a $5-billion fine to US regulators earlier this week. But even as it tackles these challenges, WhatsApp is bullish on prospects in India as it revealed that it has 400 million monthly active users here out of a global base of 1.5 billion."

Source:  Economic Times, 26th July 2019

Facebook's revenues grew 28% year on year in Q2 2019

"Facebook reported a 28% revenue gain to $16.9 billion in Q2 from a year earlier, as the social media giant shook off negative headlines and a record-setting fine for its data-sharing practices this week. Mobile ad revenue hit $15.6 billion, or about 94% of total ad revenue, COO Sheryl Sandberg said in the Wednesday conference call with analysts. The figure was 12% higher than the $13.9 billion reported in Q1, highlighting the importance of mobile ads for Facebook.
Mobile-first video accounted for more than 50% of video revenue for the company, Sandberg said. Brands are working to develop "thumb-stopping" creative that hooks mobile viewers faster than 30-second TV ads. "The best mobile-first ad or ad on Facebook gets to the main point or gets to the product in the first three seconds," she said.
Facebook's "blue" app, its oldest and biggest product, boosted its user base by 8% to 2.41 billion in Q2 from a year earlier, making it the largest social media platform worldwide. Daily active users (DAUs) rose 6% to 1.59 billion from a year earlier. The figures generally don't include users of Instagram, WhatsApp or Oculus, per Facebook's report."
Source:  Facebook Q2 2019 Results, reported by Mobile Marketer, 25th July 2019