The Premier League is the most watched football league in the world

"Across the globe the Barclays Premier League continues to be the most watched football league in the world.
The Premier League is broadcast in 212 territories around the world, working with 80 different broadcasters.
The TV audience for Premier League games is 4.7bn, and the number of homes reached last season increased 11 per cent to 643m. In total, the League clocked up 185,000 hours of TV coverage in 2010/11, an increase of 65 per cent on the previous campaign."

Source:  The Premier League website, retrieved 29th May 2014

Note 1 - Figures seem to be for 2010/11 season

Note 2 - I'm assuming reach figures are for audience and households who have access to at least one game per season, not who actually watch.

Online ad spend grew to €27.3 billion in Europe in 2013

"At the 8th edition of its annual Interact conference IAB Europe today announced that online advertising grew 11.9% to a market value of €27.3bn in 2013.
The AdEx Benchmark research - the definitive guide to the state of the European online advertising market - revealed that online advertising enjoyed another year of sustained growth across Europe. Most markets have shown a significant and now more uniform level of growth than in previous years. Whilst developing markets continue to grow their share of total media spend, the more mature markets have benefited from innovation in online advertising technology and advances in monetizing mobile, enabling them to also further extend their growth curve. Changing consumer patterns have made mobile monetization more urgent and Western European markets in particular are responding to this challenge generating the majority of their growth from mobile. A robust macroeconomic framework has increased advertiser confidence and stimulated budget shifts to online.
Mobile has taken double-digit display market share for the first time, accounting for 11.5% with a growth rate of 128.5% compared with 2012.
Online video advertising also showed strong growth, increasing by 45.4% in 2013, to nearly €1.19bn. This is the first time in Europe that online video has crossed the €1billion mark.
Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe, noted the importance of the digital ecosystem to European growth. “These results confirm the increasing value contributed by digital advertising to Europe’s economy. Technology innovation is driving growth and it’s important that we continue to foster our European digital businesses to enable a strong European presence on the world stage.”
Mobile, video and big data continue to provide rich new ways to engage consumers and at Interact today we will explore the success stories and illustrate the power of digital services in enabling business growth.
The IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark study splits the online ad market into 3 broad segments: Display, Search and Classifieds and Directories. Growth in these online advertising formats has been underpinned by shifting uses in devices and changing consumption patterns.
In 2013, the Display Ad market experienced the highest growth across the categories at 14.9%, with a total value of €9.2bn.
Search showed growth of 13.0% - and a market value of €13.4 billion. Strong growth was recorded in many markets across Europe with Russia again being the out-perfomer at 34.4% search growth. Factors for growth included investment in search across different devices, boosting the mobile search figures, as consumers continue to increase their time spent online on the go and the continued investment from small to medium sized business in the medium.
The 2013 Classifieds and Directories market was relatively stable at €4.6bn showing growth of 3.6%. Central and Eastern European markets continued to benefit from the migration of spend from print classifieds to online and the switch to classifieds normally noted in more difficult economic circumstances. Scandinavian markets maintained their strong position in this category €256m in Sweden and €252m in Norway although with their level of maturity in the category comes a lesser level of growth. Market consolidation has brought scale and efficiency to this formerly fragmented sector.
Daniel Knapp, Director of Advertising Research at IHS Technology and author of the research, said, “The underlying dynamics of growth in online advertising have changed in 2013. Mobile, and cross-device consumption has so far been a challenge facing marketers, with underdeveloped ecosystems and fragmented measurement approaches hampering investment. Yet our study shows that mobile has now become a significant part of online ad spend. Advancements in advertising targeting technology, standardisation of formats and improvements in measurement have allowed important progress in bridging the consumption/ad spend divide in mobile. It is now imperative that market participants further evolve their data strategies and connect advertising experiences across different devices from mobile to desktop for sustainable market growth.”
The top 10 list of markets are as follows. Top Individual market growth was registered by Russia 26.8% and Turkey with 24.3%.
Top 10 Rankings
1. UK - €7.4bn
2. Germany – €4.7bn
3. France - €3.5bn
4. Russia – €1.8bn
5. Italy- €1.7bn
6. Netherlands - €1.3bn
7. Sweden - €0.9bn
8. Spain – €0.9bn
9. Norway - €0.7bn
10. Denmark - €0.6bn"
Source:  Press release from IAB Europe, 20th May 2014

Time spent watching video in the UK

Sources:  BARB, comScore, Route, IMDB, Rentrak, FAME, DCM, Broadcaster Data, Thinkbox estimates, featured in The Thinkbox Blog, 10th April 2014

A Facebook campaign for Ikea increased footfall by 11 percent

"An Ikea Facebook campaign drove an 11 per cent increase in foot traffic for the retailer, according to research carried out by Vizeum and iProspect in partnership with Facebook and EE.
The study anonymously matched Facebook usage and EE data over the course of two weeks, to measure the effect of a geotargeted News Feed campaign on store visits among more than 172,000 people that were served adverts, and an equally-sized control group.
The campaign ran in Cardiff between December 2013 and January 2014, serving 1.4m impressions overall. Based on the studied sample, the strongest uplift came from 22-25 year olds, who were 31 per cent more likely to visit the store as a result of seeing the ads. These additional visitors delivered an estimated ROI of 6:1 against Ikea’s media spend with Facebook."

Source:  Mobile Marketing Magazine, 15th May 2014

Spotify has 10 million paying subscribers

"Today we are thrilled to announce a special milestone – we now have 10 million paying subscribers and more than 40 million active users across 56 markets! Wow — we’re incredibly grateful to the thousands of artists and millions of music fans around the world who have helped us reach this point."
Source:  Spotify blog, 21st May 2014

More than a third of phones shipped in Japan are iPhones

"Apple Inc. boosted its share of the Japan mobile-phone market to more than a third after the country’s largest wireless carrier started selling the iPhone.
Apple boosted iPhone shipments in Japan to 36.6 percent of the market in the year ended March, up from 25.5 percent a year earlier, according to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd. The Cupertino, California-based smartphone maker shipped 14.43 million phones in Japan the past fiscal year, the researcher said."

Source:  Bloomberg, 13th May 2014

Facebook's 'I'm a Voter' feature encouraged 340,000 extra people to vote in the US in 2010

"Facebook is rolling out its "I'm a voter" feature worldwide, after the app's success in the Indian elections in early May.
More than four million Indian voters clicked the button, registering that they had voted during the country's parliamentary elections, according to Reuters. Thanks to that success, the company is rolling the feature out for a number of upcoming elections.
Facebook users in the EU, Colombia, South Korea, Indonesia, New Zealand and Brazil will all have the option to broadcast their status as voters. Scottish voters will have the chance to click the button twice, in both the European parliament elections and the referendum for Scottish independence.
The feature was first introduced for the 2010 US mid-term elections, and by 2012, more than nine million voters had clicked it to report that they had taken part in the US presidential election.
Now that the feature is active worldwide, Facebook estimates that a third of its active users will see the message in their news feeds at some point this year – more than 400 million people.
And it's about more than just over-sharing. In 2010, the feature was credited with encouraging 340,000 people to vote who would otherwise have stayed at home."

Source:  The Guardian, 20th May 2014

52 percent of daily Pinterest users use the app in-store to guide purchases

"Pinterest users should be prime targets for marketers’ budgets, with many of these consumers being early adopters who love to try and buy new things yet are increasingly difficult to reach on traditional media outlets, according to a new report from Ahalogy.
With Pinterest having just introduced its first paid advertising product, Promoted Pins, the report reveals some important marketing opportunities for brands. For example, 52 percent of daily Pinterest users are pulling up the app in-store to guide their purchases."

Source:  Mobile Marketer, 16th May 2014

Target's Cartwheel Facebook-connected discounts app has 7 million users

"Target’s Cartwheel has surpassed 7 million users and was recently updated with enhanced social features as the shopping application celebrates its one-year anniversary.
The app has proven to be a bigger success than expected and a much-needed one, at that, following Target’s massive data breach late last year that has kept away some shoppers. Key results for Cartwheel include that most users continue to use the app after their first redemption, with active users on average increasing their trips and spend at Target by nearly 30 percent, driving hundreds of millions of incremental sales from these households."

Source:  Mobile Marketer, 28th May 2014

A Chinese Oreo campaign generated 99 million emojis in 11 weeks

"Oreo targeted mainland China this spring with a mobile social campaign giving parents a way to take photos of themselves and their children offline and paste their heads into emojis, with over 99 million emojis generated within 11 weeks."
Source:  Mobile Marketer, 30th May 2014

Uber drivers earn higher median incomes than other taxi drivers

"A major shift is underway on America’s roadways. For a long time, driving strangers from point A to point B paid terribly. Estimates of the typical cab driver’s salary hover around $30,000.
According to Uber, the median wage for an UberX driver working at least 40 hours a week in New York City is $90,766 a year. In San Francisco, the median wage for an UberX driver working at least 40 hours a week is $74,191.
Uber’s numbers don’t account for the costs a driver incurs to own and operate a vehicle. Still, the gap in compensation for providing similar services is astounding, and illuminates the power of Uber, which is using its mastery of technology to steadily disrupt the traditional cab industry. Worldwide 20,000 new drivers a month have joined Uber’s platform in 2014."

Source:  Washington Post, 27th May 2014

Chinese taxi app Didi has 100m users and books 5m trips a day

Source:  Chart 135 of KPCB Internet trends 2014, 28th May 2014

Samsung shipped more than 10m Galaxy S5s in the first 25 days

"The Samsung Galaxy S5 has entered the market on a strong point as reports out of Korea indicate the smartphone has shipped more than 10 million units in 25 days.
At this point, the Galaxy S5 can be considered Samsung’s bestselling smartphone to date, beating out its predecessor the Samsung Galaxy S4, which shipped 10 million units in 27 days. Notably, these figures are not indicative of how many consumers have purchased the Galaxy S5 but rather how many handsets have been shipped to for sale. However, it can be deduced that the amount of Galaxy S5 units that have shipped is correlated with demand for the device.
According to reports in early April, the Samsung Galaxy S5 sold better on its launch day than the Galaxy S4 at several retailers. Samsung Experience stores in the U.K. saw long lines of customers anxious to get their hands on the 2014 flagship. In Paris, the Samsung Experience store sold its entire 800-unit inventory. Additionally, some mobile networks in South Korea released the Galaxy S5 prior to the April 11 global launch date, and reported impressive sales. According to Yonhap News, carrier SK Telecom garnered average daily sales of 7,000 units in its first week of selling the Galaxy S5, which it made available to customers on March 27."

Source:  International Business Times, 10th May 2014

Note - 'Shipping' is not the same as 'selling', but it's a good indication of popularity

Subscriptions make up more than 50% of the FT's revenues

"Publishers today are subject to that most timeworn of business imperatives: Grow as large an audience as possible, then sell that scaled audience to the advertisers who want to reach it. It’s a business model that has stubbornly persisted into the digital age, despite the reality that display advertising has become an increasingly unprofitable business for publishers online.
The Financial Times is going in a different direction. Rather than chasing scale and advertising, The Financial Times has built its digital business around an audience-driven subscription model. The result: Its 665,000 subscribers, two-thirds of whom are digital, generate more than half of its overall revenue. More than 35 percent of its overall revenue comes from digital subscriptions and advertising, a number The Financial Times expects to see hit 50 percent in the medium term. Oh, and it’s profitable, too."

Source:  Digiday, 5th May 2014

Guardian moderators deal with 40,000 comments a day

"Guardian moderators, who deal with 40,000 comments a day, believe there is an orchestrated pro-Kremlin campaign"
Source:  The Guardian, 4th May 2014

Tencent had more than 120 people at The World Cup by early May

"China isn't known as a hotbed of soccer super fans. But Chinese internet giant Tencent is betting that people nonetheless want to keep up-to-speed on the World Cup. So it's planning a continuous blast of live match broadcasts; news and commentary; scores via app and instant messenger; social games; and interactive commentary on WeChat, the company's hot social app.
To put things in perspective, Tencent already has more than 120 journalists, editors and photographers on the ground in Brazil. And the company has lined up sponsors including Nike, Toyota, Budweiser, Head & Shoulders and local beer brand Tsingtao, said Sophia Ong, Tencent's GM for planning and implementation, in an interview."

Source:  AdAge, 2nd May 2014

Minecraft has sold 15m copies

The original Minecraft has sold 15 million copies! Time to celebrate! pic.twitter.com/JRdm4eFF6k
— Markus Persson (@notch) April 29, 2014

Source:  Tweet from founder Markus Persson (Notch_, 29th April 2014

Exposure to Tweets drives brand actions

"We found that over half of Twitter users reported that they have taken action after seeing brand mentions in Tweets (54%). These consumers take action on Twitter and beyond Twitter. The top two actions people took: visiting the brand’s website (23%) and visiting the brand’s Twitter page (20%). Brand Tweet exposure also drives online search for the brand (20%) as well as brand consideration with 19% of Twitter users in the study saying they’d consider trying the brand. Tweets that mention a brand also frequently spark earned media: 18% of study respondents retweet Tweets mentioning brands.
Our research revealed all age groups take action after exposure to brand-related Tweets, with a range from 41% - 59%. However, younger respondents reported the highest likelihood to take some action, at 56% for 18-24 years olds and 59% for 13-17 years olds (vs. 54% average across all ages).
Key takeaways for brands: Since Tweet exposure drives actions across platforms including searching, engagement and purchase, integrate Tweet messages and calls to action with campaigns on other media (TV, search, other social media, other owned destinations)."

Source:  Research from Twitter, The Advertising Research Foundation, FOX and DB5, reported on the Twitter blog, 1st May 2014

The average smartphone user unlocks their device 110 times per day

"How many times do you check your phone? Twice a day? Once every hour? More often? According to figures collected by a screen lock app, the average user actually checks their phone around 110 times day.
During peak times this equates to once every six or seven seconds, with some users unlocking their devices up to 900 times over the course of a day, which in reality is around 18 hours.
The information was collected by Android app Locket, which monitored how many times its 150,000 users checked their phone over in a day.

The New York-based app pays users in return for showing adverts on their lockscreens. 

According to the data, an average user checks their device - which means they activate the screen by pressing the home or power button or they unlock the device - 110 times per day.
In one particular case, a Locket user locked and unlocked their phone up to 900 times.
During peak hours, when users are most active, between 5pm and 8pm, over 75 per cent of people unlock their phones and actively use them."

Source:  Daily Mail, 8th October 2013

See also - The average frequency of app usage

American Apparel makes up to $50,000 in revenue when it does a flash sale on Twitter

"We’ve made as much as $50,000 in one flash sale on Twitter. You can get a sense immediately of what people respond to. Then you can test, iterate and improve so you create flash promos that really move the needle in a tight window of time.
Like any company, each team at American Apparel has sales goals and benchmarks. If they are behind, now they know they can leverage Twitter. They can come to our team and ask if they can do a quick promotion or offer free shipping for the afternoon. The goal is always to create an experience that gets people excited and benefits our fans."

Source:  Interview with American Apparel's Ryan Holiday on the Twitter blog, 16th January 2014

Viacom bought Channel 5 for £450m

"MTV-owner Viacom has confirmed the acquisition of Richard Desmond's Channel 5 in a £450m cash deal.
The US media group has entered a definitive agreement to buy the broadcaster and its subsidiary channels, 5* and 5USA, as well as children's brand Milkshake! and digital catch-up TV service Demand 5.
Viacom, which owns channels including Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, will be able to drive its nascent free-to-air TV strategy which in the UK consists of the VIVA channel on Freeview and Freesat.
"The acquisition of Channel 5 accelerates Viacom's strategy in the UK, one of the world's most important and valuable media markets," said Philippe Dauman, chief executive of Viacom. "Channel 5's momentum is indisputable, with impactful programming, increasing popularity and a growing digital platform"."

Source:  The Guardian, 1st May 2014

Note - Richard Desmond bought it for £103.5m in 2010

Vulfpek made $20,000 from their 'silent album' on Spotify

"Last month, Vulfpek released a completely silent album on Spotify to finance a free tour for fans.  That was laughed off by Spotify at first, until Vulfpek earned more than $20,000 on the idea.  That prompted a big response: according to the band, Spotify’s lawyers first asked nicely, then started ripping it down."
Source:  Digital Music News, 24th April 2014
Note - Background to story