Monday, 15 June 2020

Kids in the UK, US and Spain spend almost as much time with TikTok as YouTube




Data provided by 60,000 families with kids aged 4-14 in UK, US and Spain

1/3 of Americans say they avoid restaurants with online ratings of less than 4 stars

"Online reviews are a key driver of restaurant revenue, with one-third of customers saying that they avoid eateries with ratings of less than four stars. Social media is just as vital to driving business, with 72 percent of customers reporting that they have used Facebook to decide where to eat. Both of these channels are plagued with fraud, however, including fake reviews and phishing scams on social media. This month’s Deep Dive explores how restaurants can identify fake reviews and have them removed, and how they can educate their customers to spot impostors on social media."

Friday, 5 June 2020

25% of US households have a subscription to Disney+


Source:  Data from Parks Associates, reported 29th May 2020

The US was the top spending market for AVOD in 2019

Top five countries by AVoD expenditure ($ million)
Ranking Country 2019
1 USA 7,998
2 China 6,777
3 United Kingdom 1,620
4 Japan 1,611 4
5 India 632 5

Digital ad expenditure in Europe reached €64,8bn in 2019

"IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, announced at its virtual Interact conference today that digital advertising grew 12.3 percent in 2019 to €64.8bn, driven by strong growth in out-stream video, mobile and social spend. On average €4bn has been added to the digital advertising market every year since 2006.
2020 Digital Advertising Forecast
Given the impact that COVID-19 that had on the industry’s operations and investments, the 2019 results were accompanied by a 2020 forecast for digital investment by IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Dr. Daniel Knapp. In its April 2020 forecast, the IMF predicted that Covid-19 and the global lockdown will spark the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Knapp modelled his forecasts on macroeconomic indicators, paired with industry data to estimate a decline of 16.3% for Europe (including the UK). However, Knapp highlighted that digital is looking to be the least affected advertising media, predicting a decline by -5.5% in 2020 in Europe compared to a stronger contraction (-21.3%) for other media.
2019 Digital Advertising Investment
The AdEx Benchmark study is the definitive guide to advertising expenditure in Europe, covering 28 markets, and is now in its fourteenth year. In 2019, a total of twenty-one markets experienced double-digit year-on-year growth.
Video grew by nearly 30 percent to almost €10bn; out-stream was the driving force behind this growth with an increase of 36 percent. In some markets out-stream experienced growth of more than 40 percent, for example Finland, Greece and the UK.
Social is fueling display growth across Europe, up 25.6 percent year-on-year with double-digit growth in all twenty-eight markets. Search remains the largest online advertising category in terms of revenue with a growth of 11.8 percent and a market value of €28bn. Total mobile ad spend grew by 24.9 percent in 2019 to exceed €30bn to account for nearly half (47 percent) of all digital ad spend in Europe.
[...]
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study divides the digital ad market into three categories: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
[...]
CEE continues to dominate the growth in Europe and in 2019, as in 2018. The top five largest growth markets all came from the CEE region:
Serbia – 28.4 percent
Ukraine – 28.0 percent
Belarus – 25.2 percent
Croatia – 22.3 percent
Turkey– 19.1 percent

Top 10 rankings (by market size) are:
UK – €21.4bn
Germany – €9.4bn
France – €6.1bn
Russia – €4.9bn
Italy – €3.2bn
Spain – €3.2bn
Sweden – €2.3bn
Netherlands – €2.3bn
Switzerland – €1.8bn
Norway – €1.3bn"
Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 3rd June 2020
Download the 25 page presentation here

Thursday, 21 May 2020

Spotify paid (reportedly) over $100m for Joe Rogan's podcast

"Spotify signed an exclusive agreement with comedian Joe Rogan to carry his popular podcast on its audio streaming platform starting Sept. 1, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer. The company is paying more than $100 million for the rights to stream new episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience" and its library going back to 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the deal.
The podcast will be free to all Spotify users, including paid subscribers and people who listen to its ad-supported service. Spotify also will carry video episodes of the podcasts as in-app "vodcasts," the company announced.​
Rogan will maintain full creative control over the show, which features interviews with celebrities and experts on topics such as neuroscience, sports, comedy, health, infectious disease and culture. After the September debut, all prior episodes of "The Joe Rogan Experience" will be exclusive to Spotify by the end of the year, per Spotify."
Source:  Mobile Marketer, 20th May 2020

Thursday, 7 May 2020

Etsy sold more than 12m masks in April 2020

"Etsy began pushing homemade masks in early April, and the results panned out in a big way: total sales on the platform doubled last month, by and large thanks to a surge in face mask sales. For comparison, Etsy’s marketplace sales figures between January and March were up only 16 percent.
More than 12 million face masks were sold during April, totaling around $133 million in sales. Etsy says they represented the second largest category of product sales across the entire site during the month of April."
Source:  The Verge, 6th May 2020

Tuesday, 5 May 2020

'Trolls World Tour' generated nearly $100m in streaming revenues in 19 days

"Universal’s decision to take DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour into homes at the 48-hour rental price of $19.99 during exhibition’s COVID-19 shutdown has reportedly racked up an estimated $95M in rental fees in the title’s first 19 days. With VOD terms in the studio’s favor at an estimated 80%, Universal is banking an estimated $77M in revenues before marketing expenses.  Those are better terms for Universal then the 50/50 or 60%-65%/40% splits they reap in their relationship with movie theaters."

Monday, 4 May 2020

42% of UK households with Samsung smart TVs watch 2 hours or less of linear TV a month

"The stats are these: 28% of Samsung smart TV households in the UK watch less than 2 hours of linear TV a month; and 14% watch none at all. All told then, 42% are light — very light — linear viewers.
Now the first caveat is that Samsung smart TV households are not representative of the nation as a whole. But there are 5m of them, and 44m across Europe. According to Ofcom, smart TV penetration in 2019 was 47%, and probably over 50% now. It’s unlikely that viewing habits in other smart TV households will vary much."
Source:  Presentation by Andy Jones of Samsung Ads, reported by MediaTel, 4th May 2020

515m people subscribe to Apple apps and services

"Sales of services such as streaming television content rose with billions of people locked in their homes, the company said. The segment, which includes iCloud storage as well as its streaming services for music and television shows, saw sales of $13.4bn, compared with analyst estimates of $12.9n, according to FactSet data. Cook said Apple had 515 million subscribers to apps and services, up by 125 million from one year earlier."
Source:  The Guardian, 30th April 2020
Note - I'm assuming that this is 'people' rather than devices

Thursday, 26 March 2020

Facebook's usage has gone up by 50% as a result of the coronavirus

"The coronavirus has ended up a boon for social media giant Facebook, which saw a 50 percent spike in usage as the virus ate its way through the country’s health and economy.
The usage of the social media network’s numerous features, such as messenger and video calls, has spiked in recent weeks as millions of Americans have had to stay home to avoid the virus. This is a sharp turnaround from not so long ago when the social network seemed to be collecting dust, mostly seeing use from older people as the youth flocked to newer models of social media.
But as of late, Facebook has been seeing increases in news consumption as well, with more than half the articles consumed on the site relating to the virus pandemic. Ranjan Subramanian, a data analyst with the company, talked about the increase in a blog post, calling it “unprecedented.”
The report says the bulk of the increase — over 90 percent — can be credited to what Facebook terms “Power News Consumers” and “Power News Discussers,” who consume and talk about news more than most users of the service. The company, monitoring the activity from that spike fervently, wants to make sure all news put out about the worldwide crisis is as accurate and authoritative as possible — a kind of real-time experiment in how to handle news on social media."

More than a million people are watching Joe Wicks' YouTube workouts

"A YouTube workout by the online fitness guru Joe Wicks has been livestreamed by more than a million people, as parents turn to alternative teaching methods to cope with their children not being able to attend school during the coronavirus outbreak.
Wicks, who was due to start a tour of schools to promote fitness and healthy living this week, decided to livestream a daily workout instead, saying he wanted to become “the PE teacher for the nation” as the coronavirus forces more children indoors.
The former personal trainer said he had “never seen anything like” the support his workout received on Facebook, where it was shared more than 150,000 times, with support from school teachers who directed students to the stream as an alternative to PE lessons. Some schools also included links to the workout in home curriculum documents emailed to parents."