Sony has sold more than 2m Playstation VR headsets

"Sony released some new stats today detailing the progression of sales for its PS4 console and PS VR headset systems. The numbers that matter: 70.6 million PS4 consoles, 617.8 million PS4 titles, 2 million PS VR headsets and 12.2 million PS VR titles.
Things appear to be moving along rather well in console-land, where Sony is almost certainly winning the console wars with Microsoft. Microsoft hasn’t released unit sales numbers since January of this year, when it announced that 26 million Xbox One units had been sold. In that time, Microsoft has released an updated version of the system, the 4K-playing Xbox One X. Sony released the souped-up PS4 Pro last year.
Meanwhile, Sony has also made significant inroads on sales of its VR headsets. The company announced in June that the company had sold 1 million headsets. The headset has been given a sort of price drop through the inclusion of a camera that had previously been an additional purchase."

Source:  Techcrunch, 7th December 2017

Earlier - 1m announced in early June 2017

There were over 17bn live video chats on Messenger in 2017

"Overall, there were 17 billion realtime video chats on Messenger, marking two times as many video chat sessions in 2017 compared to 2016."
Source:  Facebook, 13th December 2017

The videos that get the most engagement on Facebook are food videos

Source:  Buzzsumo blog, 23rd August 2017

Unilever & Nestle get a return of £2 for every £1 spend on digital display ads in the UK

"On average, for every £1 Unilever and Nestlé spend on display ads in the UK both brands return almost double in sales, according to data from the Internet Advertising Bureaux (IAB UK).
The figures come as a year of FMCG digital efficiency drives and agency reviews draws to a close, with the IAB claiming that every £1 spent on digital display units yields a typical ROI of £1.94 across all major British supermarkets.
The study tracked the programmatic display advertising of nine consumer goods brands including Persil, Magnum, Tropicana, PG Tips and Nescafe across a number of premium sites like the Guardian, Mail Online, Yahoo and Gumtree.
Though it didn’t specify the breakdowns for individual brand ROI, it noted that one brand it monitored saw a £3.38 ROI for every £1 it invested.
The research was completed over a year-long period, comparing display spend with short-term sales numbers gleaned from i2c – a joint venture between Sainsbury’s and Nectar card owner Aimia – and Nielsen’s Homescan data. The resulting data, which was commissioned by i2c and the IAB gives an insight into the shopping behaviour at all major UK supermarkets."

Source:  Data from the IAB, reported by The Drum, 12th December 2017

79% of web sites track visitors - & 10% send data back to 10 or more companies

"A new study from Ghostery, an anti-tracking tool, shows that an overwhelming majority (79%) of websites globally are tracking visitors' data — with 10% of these sites actually sending user data to 10 companies or more."
Source:  Data from Ghostery, reported by Axios, 12th December 2017

A six year old is making an estimated $11m a year as a toy reviewer on YouTube

"Ryan, the 6-year-old "host" of Ryan ToysReview, a popular toy-review channel on YouTube, is also reportedly a multi-millionaire.
A family-run YouTube channel, Ryan ToysReview generated around $11 million in pre-tax income in 2017, according to Forbes' annual list of the highest-earning YouTube celebrities.
The raw estimate of $11 million tied Ryan ToysReview with the YouTube comedy stalwart Smosh for eighth place on the Forbes list."
Source:  The Independent, 10th December 2017

Publishers are losing millions of dollars a day due to fraudulent inventory

"A new study has found massive volumes of counterfeit inventory across global display and video exchanges. The study, which was conducted by a partnership of 16 leading programmatic publishers across 26 domains, found that the record levels of fraud were resulting in lost revenues of up to $1.27bn per year.
With the participation of DSPs including Amobee, Quantcast and Google, the publishers examined the total available inventory across all exchanges for the 26 domains, and found video callouts were overstated by as much as 57 times the available inventory, representing around 700m counterfeit callouts per day. For display advertising, inventory was overstated by four times, with daily counterfeit callouts in the billions.
The publishers involved included Business Insider, The LA Times, Mail Online, The New York Times, Turner, USA Today, The Washington Post and Watson Advertising. In an effort to combat such high levels of fraud, the firms have thrown their support behind the IAB’s Ads.txt initiative, which aims to provide a standard way of authorising inventory.
“The results of this study confirm that Ads.txt needs to be adopted as rapidly as possible to cut off the flow of counterfeit website inventory,” said Dennis Buchheim, senior vice president and general manager at IAB Tech Lab. “It is critical that the industry comes together to put a stop to criminal activity and secure the health of the supply chain.”
Counterfeit impressions are created when a bad seller replaces the URL of a low quality site with a premium publisher URL, or a fraudster creates fake impressions and labels them with a high quality publisher’s URK. This fake inventory is then sold on multiple exchanges and SSPs, without the knowledge of the publishers they are impersonating, to trick advertisers into thinking they are buying premium inventory. The process robs premium publishers of revenues, and tricks advertisers into buying mislabelled and potentially unsafe inventory."

Source:  Mobile Marketing, 12th December 2017

Starbucks' loyaltry programme has 13.2m members in the US

"Mobile payments accounted for 30 percent of transactions in U.S. stores during the company’s third quarter, which was up from 29 percent in the previous quarter and 27 percent in Q1.
Starbucks’ Rewards program grew by 11 percent from last year; there are now 13.3 million active members in the U.S. that account for 36 percent of U.S. company-operated store sales. However, membership has remained stagnant at 13.3 million since April, when Starbucks reported its Q2 earnings. That’s also when Starbucks tweaked the program to reward customers based on money they spend rather than how often they visit."

Source:  GeekWire, 2nd November 2017

NatGeo's Safari Live had 220m views on Facebook in 3 months

"From August 3 to October 31, 2017, National Geographic's Safari Live garnered 220 million total views on Facebook Watch, 187,000 shares, likes and comments and 8.3 million video views, according to data from the publisher made available to Marketing Dive. The show saw rapid follower growth, adding 7,500 followers in August, 52,000 followers in September for a month-to-month increase of 583% and 65,000 fans in October, representing another 25% gain.
Nat Geo launched Safari Live in 2015 as an interactive way for digital viewers to experience an actual safari. It had been broadcast live on YouTube twice daily before Facebook asked the brand to join the alpha launch of Facebook Watch, with its first broadcast on August 2."

Source:  Mobile Marketer, 29th November 2017

Mobile had its first $2bn day in the US on Cyber Monday 2017

"Mobile had its first-ever $2bn shopping day in the US on Cyber Monday, helping drive online sales to its largest total in history of $6.59bn for the day.
According to Adobe estimates, smartphones alone accounted for $1.59bn of revenue on the day, representing an all-time high year-on-year (YoY) growth of 39.2 per cent. Smartphone traffic also saw growth of 22.2 per cent, helping overall web traffic to retail sites to increase by 11.9 per cent.
Overall mobile devices represented 47.4 per cent of retail site visits – 39.9 per cent smartphones, 7.6 per cent tablets – and 33.1 per cent of revenue – 24.1 per cent smartphone, nine per cent tablets. Mobile transactions were 12 per cent higher in value on average than Cyber Monday 2016."

Source:  Mobile Marketing, 29th November 2017

Note - so $1.6bn for mobile, and $0.6bn for tablets
Plus - Black Friday stats here
Plus - Data on in-store footfall here

30,000 organisations use Facebook's Workplace network

"Workplace by Facebook, which started with browser and mobile-only applications but since October is available as a desktop app, is the first major Facebook product to be built outside the United States, primarily in London, where Mr Codorniou is based.
Its value proposition is different to other enterprise apps, he says, because it aims to “connect everyone in the company, from the chief executive to employees on the front line, to people who work in different offices, in different time zones, speaking different languages”.
The company already has 30,000 organisations, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Starbucks, using the platform – more than double from six months ago. Mr Codorniou was even surprised to find 15 women working in a London nail salon using it."
Source:  Raconteur, 30th November 2017

Waymo's autonomous vehicles have driven 4 million miles

"Waymo continues to press its lead in terms of actual miles driven on roads, which is potentially the most important metric out there when it comes to building successful autonomous driving technology. The Alphabet-owned company that began life as Google’s self-driving car project around a decade ago now has 4 million miles driven autonomously on roads.
That 4 million miles represents the self-driving effort of Waymo’s entire test fleet, covering its original autonomous vehicles all the way up to its current driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which are actually now testing on Arizona public roads, right alongside everyday human drivers, with no safety driver behind the wheel at all.
Waymo puts the milestone in perspective by noting that it would take a human around 300 years to drive that many miles, if they were driving at the average rate of a person in the U.S. today. Plus, the pace of Waymo’s accumulation of distance driven is ramping up: It managed to gain 1 million miles between just May and November of this year — it took the company six years to rack up its first million, by comparison."
Source:  Techcrunch, 27th November 2017

28% of ten year olds in the UK have a social media profile

"Half of children aged 11 and 12 have a social media profile, despite most platforms' minimum age being 13, a study from regulator Ofcom suggests.
Children's charity the NSPCC called on the government to act on the issue of under-age profiles.
The media watchdog also said children were increasingly getting their news from social media, but most were aware of the concept of fake news.
Just 32% believed that news accessed on such platforms was reported truthfully.
Ofcom's Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes report found that 46% of 11-year-olds, 51% of 12-year-olds and 28% of 10-year-olds now have a social media profile.
Parental awareness of the age limit was low - with about eight in 10 of those parents whose children use Instagram or Snapchat unaware of the restrictions."
Source:  BBC News, taking data from Ofcom, 29th November 2017

People have spent $1.3m buying virtual cats in the CryptoKitties game

"Launched a few days ago, CryptoKitties is essentially like an digital version of Pokemon cards but based on the Ethereum blockchain. And like most viral sensations that catch on in the tech world, it’s blowing up fast.
Built by Vancouver and San Francisco-based design studio AxiomZen, the game is the latest fad in the world of cryptocurrency and probably soon tech in general.
People are spending a crazy amount of real money on the game. So far about $1.3M has been transacted, with multiple kittens selling for ~50 ETH (around $23,000) and the “genesis” kitten being sold for a record ~246 ETH (around $113,000). This third party site tracks the largest purchases made to date on the game. And like any good viral sensation prices are rising and fluctuating fast. Right now it will cost you about .03 ETH, or $12 to buy the least expensive kitten in the game."

Source:  Techcrunch, 4th December 2017

The FT has more than 900,000 paying subscribers

"The Financial Times has surpassed 900,000 paid-for readers for the first time.  Celebrating this success in a note to staff, FT CEO John Ridding said:
“Last week, we burst through the 900,000 paid-for reader level.
“That is a major milestone and a fantastic achievement, and I wanted to say a big thank you for getting us to this historic record. Never before in our 130 year history have so many people paid to read the FT.
“It was a company-wide and coordinated push – from our excellent editorial coverage, with a string of strong exclusives and beautifully written features, to smart marketing, customer service and product and tech. It was also the result of many individual efforts, such as sending gift articles to friends and contacts and spreading the message about the FT."

Source:  Financial Times, 20th November 2017

Alibaba sold $25bn worth of products on Singles Day 2017

"Alibaba has set another Single’s Day record after the e-commerce giant sold over $25 billion of product on the Chinese biggest online shopping date.
The full number comes in at 163.8 billion RMB, that’s roughly $25.3 billion, in GMV — that’s “gross merchandise volume” which is used to measure a dollar value for all sales on a platform. In Alibaba’s case, that predominantly means its Taobao marketplace and Tmall brand store although it does offer sales via its international services and it ships worldwide. All told, Alibaba handled 1.48 Billion transactions during the 24-hour period.
That represents an impressive 39 percent increase on last year’s sales total of RMB 120.7 billion ($17.79 billion), and it comes nicely on the heels of another blockbuster quarter in which Alibaba’s revenue surged by 61 percent thanks to its core business in China.
For comparison, Alibaba’s Single’s Day haul puts America’s largest shopping days in the corner. Retailers pulled in a record $3 billion on Black Friday and then $3.45 billion on Cyber Monday, both of which were records."
Source:  Techcrunch, 12th November 2017
Plus - 90% on mobile, up from 82% in 2016 and 69% in 2015

WeChat users send 38bn messages per day

"The chatty users of WeChat have just set a new record, sending 38 billion messages per day. That’s 25 percent more than last year.
[WhatsApp has 55bn per day]
Tencent, maker of WeChat, also revealed a few more stats today in its 2017 WeChat Data Report:
6.1 billion voice messages sent each day
205 million video and voice calls daily
50 million “seniors” – age 55-70 – are active users
3.5 million active “official accounts,” used by brands, media outlets, bloggers, and celebrities
797 million users actively browse through content from official accounts"

Source:  Tech in Asia, 9th November 2017

More in WeChat's 2017 Data Report

The most popular emoji on iPhones & other iOS devices

Source:  Apple's Differential Privacy Overview, November 2017

Amazon is now the second largest US company by headcount

"It's hard to imagine a company that already employed 382,400 people could grow its headcount 77% in just three months.
But that's exactly what Amazon did. At the end of September, the e-commerce giant employed 541,900 people, up 159,500 from the end of June.
The boost in employees mostly came from Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August. That deal added 90,000 people to Amazon's payroll. But even setting that deal aside, Amazon still brought on board 70,000 additional new employees.
An undisclosed number of those came from Souq.com, the Middle East's biggest e-commerce player, which Amazon also bought last quarter, Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer, told analysts during the company's quarterly conference call on Thursday. Excluding Whole Foods and Souq, Amazon's headcount would have grown 47%, Olsavsky said.
Amazon is now the second largest US company by headcount. However, it's still a long way behind Walmart, which has 2.3 million employees."

Source:  Business Insider, 27th October 2017

53% of US broadband households subscribe to both pay TV & paid OTT services

Source:  Research by Parks Associates, 26th October 2017

Online orders account for 57% of Domino's deliveries; Mobile is 69% of this

Source:  Data from Domino's, reported by Next Big What, Octoberber 2017
Original source:  Domino's presentation

Contactless payments account for 45% of Visa's transactions in the UK

Fun fact from Visa’s Oliver Jenkyn: Contactless payments = 91% transactions 🇦🇺, 45% 🇬🇧, 5% 🇺🇸 #money2020

— Chloe Cornish (@ChloeNCornish) October 23, 2017

Stranger Things 2 generated 750,000 reactions on social media in the first 24 hours of release

"Data science and media technology company, 4C Insights, has unveiled that Stranger Things is closing in on Game of Thrones as the second season drew over three quarters of a million engagements across social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc).
Most notable findings include:
The number of social media engagements rose from 148,063 the night before the premiere (October 26th) to a huge 750,409 on release day of the show on Netflix, with sentiment almost matching the opening night of the seventh season of Game of Thrones at 68 per cent.
Compared to the Game of Thrones premiere earlier this year, which raked in 1,114,152 social engagements, Stranger Things has a very strong following on social media for being in its infant stage and only on its second season.
Engagement on social media tailed off over the weekend to 181,749 by Sunday. Nevertheless, sentiment towards the highly anticipated show rose to 72 per cent (October 29th), indicating strong reviews from the audience, which had access to the entire season from Friday night."
Source:  Advanced Television, 31st October 2017

Also - Nielsen estimates that episode 1 of season 2 had 15.8m viewers in the first 3 days

The Guardian has 800,000 paying readers - inc 300,000 'members' & 300,000 donors

"This significant shift in the Guardian’s business model, making it less dependent on a highly challenging advertising market for media companies, results largely from a quadrupling in the number of readers making monthly payments under the title’s membership scheme, which has grown from 75,000 to 300,000 members in the past year.
The paper has also slightly increased – to 200,000 – its subscriber base for its print and digital products. And in a development which has even surprised senior Guardian executives, a further 300,000 individuals have made single donations to the paper, which has been posting appeals at the end of articles, urging readers to financially support its commitment to open access journalism.
These one-off donations, totalling several million pounds, come from 140 countries but a substantial proportion has arrived from the US, suggesting that despite a recent diminution of the Guardian US operation, the paper has a committed audience in a country with established traditions of supporting public interest journalism through philanthropy.
Together, the 800,000 contributors (members, subscribers and donors), along with casual sales of the physical paper, give the Guardian a record number of paying readers; more than the half-a-million pinnacle in print circulation achieved in the late 1980s."

Source:  The Drum, 26th October 2017

UK digital ad spend rose 13.8% Y-o-Y to £5.56bn in H1 2017

"Driven by the rise in popularity of people watching online video, advertisers spent more on video ads than banner ads for the first ever time – according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK / PwC Digital Adspend report.
In the first half of 2017, advertisers spent £699 million on video ads – a 46% year-on-year rise – whilst spend on banner ads increased by just under 2% to £685 million. Video is the fastest-growing ad format and now accounts for 35% of all spend going on display advertising.
The IAB’s CEO Jon Mew says, “The time people spend watching online video has grown tremendously over the last few years, so it’s little wonder that video is now the fastest-growing ad format as advertisers look to tap into the changing way people consume content.” 
The time people spend watching short video clips appears to have almost trebled over the last three years (Sept 2014 to Sept 2017): from 51 minutes to 2 hrs 21 minutes per week, according to YouGov data¹.
Within video advertising, spend on outstream2/social in-feed nearly doubled and is now the most popular format, accounting for 52% of video spend (£363 million), overtaking pre-and post-roll ads which account for 44% (£309 million).
Dave Counsell, Digital Trading Director, the7stars, said: “There’s no doubt that video is digital’s most important and powerful format. Growth in online consumption, improvements in measurement, quality of placements, targeting and creativity are now available alongside its unrivalled effectiveness. It’s an extremely exciting time to witness the strong results video is providing for advertisers.”
Display advertising as a whole grew 18% to £2 billion, whilst search grew 15% to £2.8 billion and classifieds remained flat at £692 million. Thus, overall digital ad spend grew 13.8% to £5.56bn in the first half of 2017.
With half of UK internet time now being spent on smartphones3, mobile’s share of digital ad spend has risen from 35% to 43%, or £2.37 billion. Mobile’s year-on-year growth was 38% and now accounts for 57% of all display ad spend, 70% of video spend and 83% of social media spend.
Ad spend on social media sites grew 42% to £1.05 billion, accounting for over half (53%) of the display ad market."

Source:  Data from the IAB & PwC, 17th October 2017

UberEats is bigger than Uber in several markets

"UberEats stands out even from the rest of the company’s fast-growing — and unprofitable — business. The delivery service, available in more than 120 markets globally, sometimes eclipses Uber’s main ride-hailing business in markets like Tokyo; Taipei, Taiwan; and Seoul, South Korea, the company said. The number of trips taken by UberEats drivers grew by more than 24 times between March 2016 and March 2017. As of July, UberEats was profitable in 27 of the 108 cities where it operated. Uber declined to reveal the service’s revenue."

Source:  New York Times, 23rd September 2017

More than 80% of store transactions in Sweden are cashless

"For a minimalist society like Sweden, cash has long been an unwanted appendage.
“We haven’t accepted cash for maybe a year and a half,” says Märta Skilimark, manager at Swedish coffee and tea store Johan & Nyström. “Our Swedish customers are very used to it. It’s basically tourists who are surprised we don’t take cash.”
According to the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, more than 80 per cent of store transactions are cashless. Similarly, from 2013 to 2014, Sweden’s cash-to-GDP ratio shrank 5.8 per cent as increasing quantities of physical money fell out of circulation. With digital payment systems such as Swish and iZettle having taken the country by storm, cash is falling by the wayside."

Source:  Raconteur, 27th Sept 2017

BuzzFeed's live morning show AM to DM is getting about 1m viewers each day

"Twitter’s making a big push into live video, with deals for pro sports, talk shows, network TV premieres and more. But what does a real newscast look like if you rethink it for Twitter? BuzzFeed’s AM to DM offers a possible answer — and it’s a fun one.
I should say up front that I’m super-biased here, even by the debased standards of media writing about media. One of the show’s hosts, Saeed Jones, was my roommate a few years ago, while the other, Isaac Fitzgerald, is a close friend. (He was the one who suggested that Jones and I should live together.)
Still, I was far from the only one watching after the show premiered last week. AM to DM was trending on Twitter, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. and No. 4 globally. In fact, BuzzFeed says the show averaged about 1 million unique viewers each day, with clips being viewed a total of 10 million times. And it’s a young audience, with 78 percent of daily live viewers under 35."

Source:  TechCrunch, 4th October 2017

Note - Not exactly sure of what counts as a viewer - would someone scrolling past a re-tweet count?
See AM2DM here

70% of brands have influencer Programmes on Instagram

Source:  Data from L2, reported in a blog post, 2nd October 2017
The top 3 categories are Luxury, Activewear and Beauty.

60% of Snapchat users create content on the platform daily

"Snapchat expects over a trillion Snaps to be sent this year — roughly 3 billion per day, with daily active users opening the app 20 times per day.
Sixty percent of its daily users create content on the platform daily, and more than one third of daily users engage with Snapchat's augmented reality technology — putting Snapchat far ahead of both Apple and Facebook in AR use. By comparison, Facebook has seen a decline in page engagement.
In Q2, users under 25 spent more than 40 minutes per day on the app and users 25 and over spent more than 20 minutes per day on the app. By comparison, Instagram users under 25 spend 32 minutes per day on the app, and users over 25 spend 24 minutes a day on the app."

Source:  Axios, 6th October 2017

Online dating is the second most popular way for heterosexual couples to meet

"Loose ties have traditionally played a key role in meeting partners. While most people were unlikely to date one of their best friends, they were highly likely to date people who were linked with their group of friends; a friend of a friend, for example. In the language of network theory, dating partners were embedded in each other’s networks.
Indeed, this has long been reflected in surveys of the way people meet their partners: through mutual friends, in bars, at work, in educational institutions, at church, through their families, and so on.
Online dating has changed that. Today, online dating is the second most common way for heterosexual couples to meet. For homosexual couples, it is far and away the most popular.
That has significant implications. “People who meet online tend to be complete strangers,” say Ortega and Hergovich. And when people meet in this way, it sets up social links that were previously nonexistent.
The question that Ortega and Hergovich investigate is how this changes the racial diversity of society. “Understanding the evolution of interracial marriage is an important problem, for intermarriage is widely considered a measure of social distance in our societies,” they say."

Source:  MIT Technology Review, 10th October 2017

Instagram has 800m MAUs and 2m active advertisers

Excited to announce 800M users, 500M daily users, and 2M advertisers on Instagram. Honored to be a small part of this team.

— Kevin Weil (@kevinweil) September 25, 2017

P&G generates $3bn a year from eCommerce; growing at 30% a year

"P&G is also adopting a new approach to programmatic. Through using third-party verification tools, it found it was reaching “too few people with too many ads too many times”, leading to “excessive frequency and waste”.
But now instead of using programmatic to save money through cheaper ad buys, P&G is now looking at the issue “through the lens of the consumer”.
He cited the example of Amazon, with P&G using its unique consumer ID data to ensure it is reaching consumers when they are ready to buy. Ecommerce is now a $3bn business at P&G and growing by 30% a year, while the improved targeting it offers is cutting waste by 20% and improving ROI by four times, as well as offering a better experience for consumers.
To help eliminate fraud, P&G has stopped buying media in the publisher long-tail, which was a “massive” source of bots. Pritchard admits the company “took the head fake” of thinking that the endless supply of websites would supply cheap media. It did, he said, “but you get what you pay for”. P&G now works with TAG and only advertisers with 200 trusted media partners that have proven they are clean."

Source:  Speech by March Pritchard at DMEXCO, reported by Marketing Week, 14th September 2017

Apple is now the largest watch maker in the world, by revenue

"Traditional watchmakers, be very afraid. Apple has announced that it is now the biggest watchmaker in the world replacing Rolex at the top of the list.
Tim Cook revealed the big news alongside the unveiling of the Apple Watch Series 3, which comes packing LTE as was expected.
Apple had already reported that it had a 50% year on year growth for Watch sales, something that Cook made reference to at the 12 September event. We still don't know exact sales figures, but it's not the Apple way to talk numbers.
That's pretty impressive though when you consider that the first Apple Watch launched in 2014, while Rolex has been making watches for a fair few more years than the Cupertino company.
Moving to the number one spot also puts Apple ahead of Fossil, who have been making a big push with smartwatches and hybrid smartwatches over the past year as well as luxury watchmaker Cartier and Omega."

Source:  Wearable, 12th September 2017

Facebook Messenger has 1.3bn Monthly Active Users

"Meanwhile, Facebook Messenger as a whole continues its ascent, entrenching itself as the top cross-OS messaging app in the West. Messenger now has 1.3 billion monthly users, up from 1.2 billion in April and 1 billion in July 2016. That’s the same count as Facebook’s other chat product, WhatsApp.
Messenger’s growth rate has slowed slightly over the years. It took just six months to go from 800 million to 1 billion, and nine more months to get 1.2 billion, and five months to add the last 100 million. That could signal that Messenger is beginning to hit saturation in some core markets."

Source:  Techcrunch, 14th Sept 2017

Amazon's price cuts at Whole Foods boosted footfall by 25%

"Amazon.com Inc.’s splashy takeover of Whole Foods, complete with deep price cuts, did more than bring a surge of publicity to the chain: It boosted customer traffic by 25 percent.
That’s the finding of Foursquare Labs Inc., which compiled location information during the first two days after Amazon completed its acquisition of the grocer. The data, culled from shoppers’ mobile devices, was compared with the same period a week earlier."

Source:  Bloomberg, 11th September 2017

BBC Three's audience share more than doubled after going online-only

"Damian Kavanagh, Controller, BBC Three, has declared that the service’s move to online from a linear channel has been a success, noting that BBC Three has more than doubled its total brand reach and seen phenomenal growth on social platforms, producing original content with true public purpose.
Speaking at a meeting of the Broadcasting Press Guild in London, Kavanagh noted that when the service moved online in February 2016, he said the transition would be a marathon not a sprint as the broadcaster learnt and adapted its behaviour to ensure it reached young audiences wherever they are.
“The growth has been amazing,” he said, paying tribute to what the BBC Three team and all the creative talent who work with it had achieved. “We’ve won over critics and audiences alike; winning numerous awards along the way including the prestigious RTS channel of the year award 2017.  And we have done what we promised – we have backed the very best emerging talent in the UK, creating some household names along the way,” he noted.
According to Kavanagh, BBC Three’s audience share has increased from 3.2 per cent to 8.2 per cent, admitting that a target of 10 per cent was set for some four years down the line. “We’re well on the way to achieving that,” he noted.
He admitted that in the multi-channel, OTT era, there was a challenge for the service to make its content and brand known to its target 18-34 demographic. “I’ve got to yell: ‘Watch me!’,” he remarked. “But I’m not going to go for clickbait [programme] titles.”"

Source:  Advanced Television, 7th September 2017

Note - I'd love to see a breakdown of some other measures like total reach, time spent etc.

Only 11% of US teens think Instagram & Snapchat have too many ads

Source:  Research from Forrester, reported in their blog, 29th August 2017

What happens in an Internet Minute in 2017

Source:  Created by Lori Lewis and Chadd Callahan of Cumulus Media, and featured in the WEF's blog, 31st August 2017

The fertility tracking app Natural Cycles is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the contraceptive pill

"Natural Cycles, the only app to be approved as a contraceptive, has proved 99 per cent effective in the largest study investigating it to date.
The startup had previously conducted a study of 4,000 women, which showed similar accuracy rates. It has now proven the efficacy of the app again after testing 22,785 women through a total of 224,563 menstrual cycles across a year, to calculate the app’s Pearl Index – the rate used to measure a contraceptive’s effectiveness. It found that if used perfectly – using protection such as condoms on red days – effectiveness is 99 per cent. Typical use, where people don’t use protection on the red days, leads to 93 per cent effectiveness, well above other natural family planning methods that rate at around 75 per cent and even the pill, which rates at 91 per cent."

Source:  Wired, 13th September 2017

A+E's Facebook show Bae or Bail had 24m views in one week

"A+E Networks released its first show on Facebook’s Watch platform for video programming, “Bae or Bail,” which is a hidden-camera reality show that tests the bonds of couples, according to a statement made available to Mobile Marketer. The first episode, which followed two couples at a pre-staged funeral prank, has received more than 24 million views since its August 30 debut, including 230,000 shares and 35,000 comments. New episodes will debut every Wednesday.
A+E has plans to release an advice series, “This Is How We Do It,” on Facebook in October. That show features discussions between grandmothers and their 20-something grandkids about sex and other intimate details of their personal lives. Each three- to six-minute episode includes advice on dating and relationships."

Source:  Mobile Marketer, 8th September 2017

Start-ups have placed more than 16m shared bicycles in China

"There are now more than 16 million shared bicycles on the road in China’s traffic-clogged cities, thanks to a fierce battle for market share among 70-plus companies backed by a total of more than $1 billion in financing. These start-ups have reshaped the urban landscape, putting bikes equipped with GPS and digital locks on almost every street corner in a way that Silicon Valley can only dream of."
Source:  NYT, 2nd September 2017

Macy's customers who buy online and collect in-store spend 25% more

"While Macy’s overall sales fell 5.4% year-on-year in Q2, the brand saw double-digit growth in online sales. Robust omnichannel capabilities play an integral role in the brand’s digital sophistication and serve as an opportunity for growth.
Macy’s customers who buy items online and pick them up in-store spend 25% more, making clear that brands need to nail the basics on omnichannel capabilities. Macy’s steps up to the plate and offers eight of the nine crucial omnichannel features mentioned by L2 retail experts Harrison Lewin and Chad Bright at this year’s DLA event in New York."

Source:  L2 inc, 25th August 2017

Google & Facebook own 8 of the 10 most popular apps in the US

Source:  June 2017 data from comScore, reported by Techcrunch, 25th August 2017

3 brands cominate UK news sites - The BBC, The Guardian and Mail Online

"Three brands (BBC, Guardian and Mail Online) together accounted for two thirds of stories read (63 per cent) and time spent (64 per cent) amongst our total sample of UK news sites during the month.
The BBC News website became even more important during the Westminster attacks as a source of reliable news. Three-quarters (76 per cent) of all those who accessed any news story about the attacks used the BBC site and over half (55 per cent) only used the BBC. Aggressive use of social and search allows some smaller brands to perform better around individual stories than they do on average, as illustrated by the Independent’s strong performance around the UnitedAirlines passenger eviction story.
Different formats are effective for different types of stories. Live blogs were by far the most popular online format during the first 12 hours of the Westminster attacks, but a 53-second video was the key driver of the United Airlines coverage.
Some brands are much more reliant on side-door traffic than others. Only 22 per cent of visits to BBC news stories come from social media, search, and other links, with 78 per cent coming from a direct path. This contrasts with other outlets like the Sun and the Independent, which generate the majority of their traffic via third-party referrals (e.g. search engines and social media). Many brands in the UK are struggling with low engagement (time spent) and low levels of loyalty (frequency of use), which is likely to make it hard to charge for content.
In general, those using social media consume more news brands than those who tend to go directly to a news website or those who tend to search for news. Those who use social media more heavily access an even wider range of brands.
Overall, our analysis shows a winner-take-all environment dominated by a few major brands, but also that distributed forms of discovery, such as social media and search, generally point towards more diverse news use than direct discovery."

Source:  Data from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, reported by Advanced TV, 30th August 2017

Amazon cut prices at Whole Foods by up to 43% on its first day of ownership

"Amazon.com Inc. spent its first day as the owner of a brick-and-mortar grocery chain cutting prices at Whole Foods Market as much as 43 percent.
In a sign of how the retailer is changing, the Amazon Echo, a voice-activated electronic assistant, was also for sale, for $99.99 -- a sharp pivot into electronics for a company known for kale and quinoa. The Echo Dot, a smaller version, was advertised for $44.99.
The tech giant’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods has sent shock waves through the already changing $800 billion supermarket industry. The wedding between Amazon and the upscale grocery promises to upend the way customers shop for groceries. Cutting prices at the chain with such an entrenched reputation for high cost that its nickname is Whole Paycheck is a sign that Amazon is serious about taking on competitors such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kroger Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp."
Source:  Bloomberg, 28th August 2017

Uber drivers in the US received $50m in tips in 6 months

"Uber has made some changes to its driver experience as part of its ongoing “180 Days of Change” campaign. Uber introduced the 180-days effort in June, with its decision to finally add tipping to its app as the first in a series of changes designed to improve the driver experience and reduce turnover among that important user group. Now, Uber is adding a few new features, including trip type preferences, more driver destinations and long trip notifications.
Already, Uber is seeing positive results from its 180-days program changes, including rapid uptake of its tipping option on the rider side.
“This week, we’re going to hit $50 million dollars in tips for drivers,” explained Uber’s U.S. and Canada manager Rachel Holt. “We launched the tipping effort in three cities two months ago, but we didn’t roll it out all over the U.S. until the middle of July. So we’re really, really excited just to see how well that feature has done in just a short period of time.”
That $50 million is a lot in context: Lyft has had the feature for years, and hit just $250 million in tips in July. Drivers have made around 200,000 phone calls to support, Holt says, since Uber introduced 24/7 phone service, and on average they reach an agent in less than 30 seconds. Eighty-five percent of drivers have said they’re satisfied with the experience."

Source:  Techcrunch, 22nd August 2017

A malware attack cost a shipping company up to $300m

"A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container ship and supply vessel company, said Tuesday that it would incur hundreds of millions in U.S. dollar losses due to the NotPetya wiper malware attacks of late June.
In its second quarter earnings report, Maersk executives said they were expecting losses between $200 million and $300 million. The lost revenue, they said, was due to “significant business interruption” because the company was forced to temporarily shutter critical systems infected with the malware.
“The malware was contained to only impact the container related businesses of A.P. Moller – Maersk, and therefore six out of nine businesses, including all Energy businesses, could uphold normal operations,” the company said in its earnings report. “A.P. Moller – Maersk also remained in full control of all vessels throughout the situation, and all employees were safe.”"

Source:  Threat Post, 16th August 2017

Amazon's own-label goods account for 2% of sales, rising to 12% during Prime Day

"Amazon has been doubling down on its private label business in recent months, though many of its own brands aren’t easily identifiable to consumers as they don’t indicate they’re Amazon-made products. But these private labels have been gaining steam, according to a new report out this week from 1010data. Several Amazon brands have been seeing tremendous growth, it found, including AmazonBasics, kids’ clothing brand Scout + Ro, Amazon Elements, and other Amazon-made devices like Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV.
The report comes from analytics and insights firm 1010data, which regularly tracks Amazon’s private label business.
During the first half of the year, Amazon’s private labels accounted for just 2 percent of total units sold, excluding marketplace and subscriptions, but the retailer boosted that figure to 12 percent during Prime Day, the report found."

Source:  Techcrunch, 16th August 2017

Note - Clearly Amazon is able to coordinate big discounts on its own label products during Prime Day!

45m people send birthday greetings on Facebook each day

"Roughly 1 in 30 Facebook users tells someone Happy Birthday each day, showing Facebook’s first major emergent behavior is still going strong. Now Facebook is equipping the 45 million people sending birthday wishes each day with some new features.
Now instead of just posting a soulless “HBD” or “Happy Birthday!” on someone’s wall with no personal message, photo, memory, or anything that makes it feel sincere, you can post one of Facebook’s auto-generated, personalized birthday videos. Similar to the ones it shows on your friendversary with different people, the birthday video will show photos of you and the birthday boy/girl with stylized transitions."
Source:  Techcrunch, 16th August 2017
Note - I'm amazed it's not higher...  I think about 25% of my friends wished me happy birthday this year!

80% of Instagram users follow at least one brand

"Today, 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one of the 15 million total brands active on the platform. Buckner Rose said as its shopping features continue to evolve, Instagram has been particularly focused on integrating the physical retail experience into a mobile framework. Specifically, Instagram has done this through implementing features like the “save” button that allows users to store posts and then organize them by category for future viewing. This was in large part catered to shoppers, 50 percent of which take at least 24 hours to make a decision on a purchase on mobile (fashion buyers are at an even higher rate, at 63 percent.) "
Source:  Glossy, 18th August 2017

Facebook carries out 4.5bn translations a day, all using machine learning

"Creating seamless, highly accurate translation experiences for the 2 billion people who use Facebook is difficult. We need to account for context, slang, typos, abbreviations, and intent simultaneously. To continue improving the quality of our translations, we recently switched from using phrase-based machine translation models to neural networks to power all of our backend translation systems, which account for more than 2,000 translation directions and 4.5 billion translations each day. These new models provide more accurate and fluent translations, improving people's experience consuming Facebook content that is not written in their preferred language."

Source:  Blog post on the Facebook code blog, 3rd August 2017

86% of US adult broadband users take part in binge viewing

"According to new research from The Diffusion Group (TDG), binge viewing — that is, viewing more than one episode of a TV series back to back — is rapidly becoming universal, with 86% ABUs (Adult Broadband Users) binging at least occasionally. But the frequency of binge viewing skews strongly in favor of younger adults. These insights are from TDG's latest report, Binge Viewing - A Consumer Snapshot.
TDG's new analysis identifies and profiles three groups of adult broadband users in terms of their binge viewing habits.
Heavy Bingers (binge daily, comprise 14 percent of ABUs),
Medium Bingers (binge monthly but not daily, comprise 51 percent of ABUs), and
Light/Non-Bingers (21 percent of ABUs that binge less than once a month, 14 percent that do not binge at all).
Importantly, TDG analysts found that the frequency of binging is strongly correlated with the viewer's age. For example, 58 percent of Heavy Bingers are between the ages of 18 and 34, while 56 percent of Light/Non-Bingers are age 45 and older."

Source:  Newswire, 9th August 2017

Xiaomi is the leading shipper of wearable devices

"The burst of the wearable bubble may have been overstated — on a global scale, at least. The category has been struggling here in the U.S., but internationally, it’s still seeing growth. Wearables are up eight-percent year-over-year, according to new numbers from Canalys — not exactly exponential, but at least things are trending in the right direction.
It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the space with any regularity that Xiaomi is leading the way here. Last week Strategy Analytics noted that the Chinese company had taken charge of global shipments for the first time ever, following Fitbit’s middling financial report, and that assessment is reflected in these numbers.
Canalys’s numbers (which are a bit lower than SA’s) put Xiaomi in first place at 3.5 million shipments, just edging Fitbit’s 3.3 million. What’s more notable than the photo finish however, is Fitbit’s on-going struggles, which find the company dropping a full 34-percent year over year.  It’s an almost complete reversal of last year’s 36-percent year over year growth. Apple’s number also dropped in the report, with company’s smartwatch moving to third place at 2.7 million shipments.
Price has been the primary factors driving Xiaomi’s growth in recent years. The company sells trackers for as low as $15 here in the States — something Fitbit and Apple can’t come close to competing with. Fitbit’s lowest priced tacker, the clip-on Zip, retails for $60, and Apple essentially only sells a single product in the category."

Source:  TechCrunch, 10th August 2017

Snapchat has 173m Daily Active Users

"Daily active users (DAU)(1) – DAUs grew from 143 million in Q2 2016 to 173 million in Q2 2017, an increase of 30.5 million or 21% year-over-year. DAUs increased 7.3 million or 4% quarter-over-quarter, from 166 million in Q1 2017.
Average revenue per user (ARPU)(2) – ARPU was $1.05 in Q2 2017, an increase of 109% over Q2 2016 when ARPU was $0.50. ARPU increased 16% over Q1 2017 when ARPU was $0.90.
Hosting costs per DAU – Hosting costs per DAU were $0.61 in Q2 2017, as compared to $0.55 in Q2 2016 and $0.60 in Q1 2017.
Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures were $19.4 million in Q2 2017, as compared to $16.4 million in Q2 2016 and $18.0 million in Q1 2017."
Source:  Snap's Q2 Results, 8th August 2017

A new algorithm reduced Deliveroo delivery times in the UK by 20%

"Food delivery startup Deliveroo claims it has reduced its delivery times by 20% with a new algorithm called "Frank".
The London-headquartered company, which is now competing with Amazon Restaurants and UberEats, announced on Wednesday that Frank has enabled it to reduce its average delivery time to 29 minutes in the UK.
A spokesperson for UberEats claimed the average time for one of its deliveries in the UK is 28 minutes but Deliveroo would likely question whether its couriers are indeed faster on average.
Deliveroo said Frank uses machine learning — a technology that allows software to become more accurate in predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed — to evaluate the most efficient way of distributing orders based on the location of restaurants, riders, and customers.
The algorithm can also tell Deliveroo's 10,000 UK restaurants how long it will take them to prepare a meal based on the time of the day and the type of order, Deliveroo said. Deliveroo claims that its 15,000 UK riders are benefiting from Frank because it allows them to complete more deliveries per hour and earn more money."

Source:  Business Insider, 26th July 2017

App publishers make 55% of their revenue though ads

"Eighty percent of top publishers use both video and display ads to monetize their apps, according to a report by AdColony made available to Mobile Marketer. Its survey found that ads generate 55% of mobile publisher revenue on average, mainly from video ads (31%).
Publishers are most enthusiastic about playable ads, which let users engage with a videogame after tapping an ad, and immersive ads, per the report. Less than half of app publishers use playables now, with just 25% saying they view them positively.
Pre-roll video ads have the lowest ranking among best user experiences, AdColony found, while 87% of publishers said rewarded video offers one of the best user experiences. In-app purchases have the best effect on the user experience, while subscriptions have the worst."

Source:  Mobile Marketer, 1st August 2017

In-App ordering accounts of 9% of Starbucks transactions

"Starbucks, the coffee chain with 27,000 stores in 75 countries, continues to ramp up mobile technology as a key part of its strategy to handle customer orders, payments and loyalty programs. The company plans to test a guest checkout feature for first-time users of its mobile application early in 2018, Matt Ryan, global chief strategy officer, said last week in a call with investors.
Payments made with a mobile device increased to 30% of transactions in the U.S. stores in fiscal Q3 2017, compared with 29% in the previous three-month period. The chain’s mobile order and pay feature that lets customers order with the Starbucks app and skip the line generated 9% of transactions. That’s nearly double the 5% from a year earlier.
While Starbucks’ mobile app has led to overwhelming foot traffic at some cafes, the company has added digital order managers to 1,000 stores to improve the ability to serve customers who order and pay through their phones."
Source:  Mobile Marketer, 31st July 2017

Games of Thrones, S7 E1 achieved Sky's highest ever viewing figure of 4.7m

"The first episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones has continued its unprecedented run by recording the biggest consolidated audience for a programme ever on Sky with 4.7 million.
The episode. entitled Dragonstone, almost doubled its audience in the week after it launched, adding an additional 1.85 million to the original 2.8 million who watched it on July 17th. This stand out performance also meant the episode secured the fifth biggest programme audience of the year in Sky homes, outperforming Sherlock, Call the Midwife and Line of Duty.
The 4.7 million figure is made up of those who watched the 2am simulcast (live or on demand) or the 9pm transmission on July 17th, those who have chosen to catch up over the past seven days through on demand on Sky Atlantic or online streaming service NOW TV, and customers who recorded the episode and watched it back. A further 729,000 downloads and streams of the episode were made via the Sky Go app, with this expected to increase further over the coming weeks. Sky Atlantic has seen a huge increase in Game of Thrones audiences year on year with a 31 per cent increase on the opening episode of season six last year (3.56 million consolidated)."

Source:  Advanced Television, 27th July 2017

Note - I'm assuming that the numbers aren't completely de-duplicated - e.g. people watching at 2am but then also watching again later on Sky Go.

ITV's ad sales fell by 8% Y-o-Y in H1 2017

"UK commercial broadcaster ITV has reported its H1 results, with a decline in advertising revenue blamed on “ongoing economic and political uncertainty”.
Advertising revenue fell 8 per cent to £769 million (€862m) in the first six months of the year. However, that fall was offset by growth at ITV studios, which makes popular shows such as The Voice and Poldark. The broadcaster’s sales rose by 5 per cent.
Peter Bazalgette, ITV Executive Chairman, commented: “ITV’s performance in the first six months of the year is very much as we anticipated and our guidance for the full year remains unchanged. Total external revenue was down 3 per cent with the decline in NAR partly offset by continued good growth in non-advertising revenues, which is a clear indication that our strategy of rebalancing the business is working.  We are confident in the underlying strength of the business as we continue to invest both organically and through acquisitions.”
“ITV Studios total revenues grew 7 per cent to £697 million including currency benefit. ITV Studios adjusted EBITA was down 9 per cent at £110 million. This was impacted by our ongoing investment in our US scripted business and the fact that the prior year includes the full benefit of the four year licence deal for The Voice of China. We have a very strong pipeline of new and returning drama and formats and we are building momentum in our US scripted business. We continue to grow our global family of production companies and in H1 we further strengthened our international drama and format business with the acquisition of Line of Duty producer World Productions in the UK, Tetra Media Studio in France and Elk Production in Sweden.”

Source:  Advanced Television, 26th July 2017

55% of email is opened on a mobile device

"The rise of mobile technology has transformed the world in many ways, including the way users interact with email. Mobile email opens have nearly doubled over the past five years and more than half of emails are now opened on mobile devices, according to a new research report from email solutions provider Return Path.
Released today, The Email Client Experience analyzes the breakdown of platforms and devices that people use to open email. The report also looks at when people are most likely to open email, as well as the length of time they typically spend reading an email. Data from May 2016 to April 2017 is compared with results from a similar study in 2012.
Following are a few of the report’s key takeaways:
Mobile is preferred nearly 2:1 over webmail. During the period analyzed, 55 percent of email was opened on mobile devices—up from just 29 percent in 2012. By contrast, webmail opens (meaning email opened on an internet browser like Gmail.com or Yahoo.com) dropped 26 percent over five years—from 37 percent to 28 percent. Desktop email (defined as email opened on software that is installed on a desktop or laptop, like Outlook or Apple Mail) had the lowest share of opens with just 16 percent—down from 34 percent in 2012.
iOS continues to dominate Android. While email opens on both iPhone and iPad have fallen slightly over the past five years, iOS still maintains a huge advantage over Android. Combined, iOS accounts for an overwhelming 79 percent of mobile email opens, compared to 20 percent for Android. In 2012, just 14 percent of mobile emails were opened on Android, while 85 percent were opened on iOS.
Gmail has overtaken Yahoo in the webmail race. Webmail still holds a significant percentage of email opens, and Gmail has emerged as the clear leader in the webmail space. In 2012, just six percent of webmail opens occurred on Gmail; that figure jumped to 59 percent during the period analyzed. Yahoo has experienced a precipitous decline over the same period, accounting for just 5 percent of webmail opens during the study period—down from 37 percent in 2012.
Mobile opens peak on the weekend; webmail and desktop gain during the workweek. Not surprisingly, the greatest percentage of mobile email opens occur on the weekend—60 percent on both Saturday and Sunday, compared to a range of 51 to 55 percent Monday through Friday. Accordingly, both webmail and desktop opens increase during the workweek, when people tend to be in front of their computers. Webmail opens hold steady at 26 percent on the weekend and about 29 percent during the week, while desktop accounts for just 13 percent of opens on the weekend and 16 to 19 percent during the week."

Source:  Data from ReturnPath, 18th July 2017

Percent of start-ups reaching different funding rounds

No Cake Walk.
Not for Entrepreneurs.
Nor for Investors. pic.twitter.com/pRCLD3dfRy

— Liad Shababo (@L1AD) July 26, 2017

WhatsApp has 1bn daily users; WhatApp Stories has 250m

"Facebook is winning the race to bring Snapchat’s Stories format to the rest of the world before its originator. WhatsApp Status, its version of Snapchat Stories, now has 250 million daily active users. That’s despite it being relegated to a secondary dedicated tab in the app, opposed to being front and center on the home screen like Instagram Stories which also now has over 250 million users."
Source:  TechCrunch, 26th July 2017

Pokémon Go generated an estimated $5.8m in revenue in a single day

"Mobile hit Pokémon Go had its highest revenue in a day since its viral launch last July, according to market analyst Sensor Tower. It’s all thanks to Legendary Pokémon.
Players spent around $5.8 million on July 23 on iOS and Android, when developer Niantic debuted Articuno and Lugia, two of five highly anticipated Legendary Pokémon to catch. This is despite its snafu at Pokémon Go Fest, a celebratory event on July 22 that went sideways when 20,000 attendees couldn’t play the game because of technical issues.
Niantic has kept up a steady drumbeat of in-game events and earlier this year launched an overhaul of the gym battle system. These efforts have maintained the attention of core players, but it looks like the Legendary Pokémon have drawn the most interest. Sensor Tower found that Pokémon Go is now No. 1 in the Apple App Store top-grossing chart in 23 countries including the U.S.
Last month, Pokémon Go passed $1.2 billion revenue. If it keeps rolling out content with high demand, we might see it reach another milestone."

Source:  VentureBeat, 26th July 2017

Spotify has 60m paying subscribers

"Spotify’s singular focus on music sees it adding subscribers faster than the iPhone company with a streaming app on the side. Spotify has added 20 million paid subscribers in less than a year, while it’s taken Apple Music more than a year and a half to make that progress. Spotify now has 60 million subscribers, compared to Apple Music’s 27 million (as of June).
Spotify’s ability to accelerate its growth rate despite competition from arguably the world’s most powerful company is a testament to the product and community it’s built."
Source:  TechCrunch, 31st July 2017
Earlier - 50m in March 2017
Earlier - 37m (estimated) in July 2016

Twitter's Q2 ad revenue fell 8% Y-o-Y; Ad engagements rose 95% Y-o-Y

"In Q2, product contributions to Twitter’s engagement and audience growth continued to increase. Monthly active usage (MAU) increased 5% year-over-year [to 328m] and daily active usage (DAU) increased 12% yearover-year, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
• Underlying business fundamentals also improved. We saw an improvement in the year-over-year growth rate for total revenue (relative to Q1), driven by accelerating year-over-year growth in our data products, continued strong growth in video with a very strong debut at the 2017 Digital Content NewFronts, and an improvement in the yearover-year growth rate for owned-and-operated (O&O) revenue.
• Finally, we achieved greater operating efficiency. Our GAAP net loss was $116 million. Excluding a $55 million cost-method investment impairment charge, we would have made progress toward GAAP profitability and further reduced our GAAP net loss. We also delivered better-than-expected adjusted EBITDA margins in Q2, despite the yearover-year decline in revenue.
Specifically, in Q2, we achieved the following results:
• Q2 revenue totaled $574 million, a decrease of 5% year-over-year.
• Advertising revenue totaled $489 million, a decrease of 8% year-over-year.
• Data licensing and other revenue totaled $85 million, an increase of 26% year-over-year.
• US revenue totaled $335 million, a decrease of 7% year-over-year.
• International revenue totaled $239 million, a decrease of 1% year-over-year.
• Total ad engagements increased 95% year-over-year.
• Cost per engagement (CPE) decreased 53% year-over-year."
Source:  Twitter's Q2 Letter to Shareholders, 27th July 2017

Facebook has 1.32bn daily active users; Mobile is 87% of ad revenue

"Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.32 billion on average for June 2017, an increase of 17% year-over-year.
Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.01 billion as of June 30, 2017, an increase of 17% year-over-year.
Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 87% of advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2017, up from approximately 84% of advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2016.
Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures for the second quarter of 2017 were $1.44 billion.
Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $35.45 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2017.
Headcount – Headcount was 20,658 as of June 30, 2017, an increase of 43% year-over-year."

Source:  Facebook's Q2 2017 Earnings, released 26th July 2017

BBC Worldwide's profits rose 18% in 2016-7

"BBC Worldwide – the commercial arm of the Corporation – has revealed its financial results for 2016/17, showing an increase in both headline sales and headline profits, and sustaining cash returns to the BBC above £200 million (€226m) for a third successive year.
Tim Davie, CEO of BBC Worldwide and Director, Global, said: “By concentrating our efforts around core areas of growth and being bold in our transformation ambition, BBC Worldwide has delivered another strong year of results. Ever-closer relationships with producers, driving excellent content, along with acute customer focus, creative deal-making and strategic partnerships, are together enabling us to navigate the rapid shifts in the markets where we operate.
[...]
Headline sales of £1.0599 billion [€1.1977bn] (2015/16: £1.0294bn) and headline profit of £157.3 million (2015/16: £133.8m) were up 3.0 per cent and 17.6 per cent respectively. Organic headline profit growth was 6.4 per cent and all four regional segments reported growth in headline profit. These results reflect good Content Sales, with sales to SVoD services remaining buoyant; an excellent performance from Branded Services, including the UKTV and BBC AMERICA channel JVs; and beneficial foreign exchange movements.
Strong demand from VoD clients helped BBC Worldwide pass its internal revenue target of £400 million in content sales one year early, at £422.4 million (2015/16: £384.2m), up 9.9 per cent, maintaining its position as the leading global distributor outside the US studios."
Source:  Advanced Television, 19th July 2017

Netflix has 104m members; over 50% are outside the US

"Our quarterly guidance is our internal forecast at the time we report and we strive for accuracy. In Q2, we underestimated the popularity of our strong slate of content which led to higher-than-expected acquisition across all major territories. As a result, global net adds totaled a Q2-record 5.2 million (vs. forecast of 3.2m) [to a total of 103.95m members] and increased 5% sequentially, bucking historical seasonal patterns. For the first six months of 2017, net adds are up 21% year-on-year to 10.2m. Our Q3 guidance assumes much of this momentum will continue but we are cognizant of the lessons of prior quarters when we over-forecasted and there was lumpiness in net adds, likely due to demand being pulled forward (into Q2 in this case).
Domestic net additions of 1.1m represented the highest level of Q2 net adds since the second quarter of 2011. For Q3’17, we project that we will add 0.75m US members, compared with 0.37m in Q3’16, which was impacted by un-grandfathering.
Our international segment now accounts for 50.1% of our total membership base. International revenue rose 57% year over year, excluding a -$23 million impact from foreign exchange, while international ASP grew 10% year over year on a F/X neutral basis. International contribution profit of -$13 million vs. -$69 million was better than our -$28 million forecast due primarily to higher-than-forecasted paid members."

Source:  Netflix' Q2 2017 Shareholder letter, 17th July 2017

Note - the figure of 104m is total members - paid members is 99.04m

Students and other 'pre family' adults in the UK watch nearly 3 hours of non-broadcast video per day

Source:  Ofcom's Public Service Broadcasting Annual Report 2017, 7th July 2017
Full pdf here

TV screen time in the UK is constant, but live viewing is falling

Source:  Ofcom's Public Service Broadcasting Annual Report 2017, 7th July 2017
Full pdf here

Watching on-demand television is increasingly popular in the UK, especially among younger viewers

"Television viewing is changing, but the PSBs remain at the heart of the overall audience experience
The television landscape is changing; people are increasingly viewing content in a variety of different ways, both on the television set and on other devices. Young adults are watching a substantial amount of non-PSB content, and behavioural changes are happening not just in this group, but among those up to the age of 45.
Despite the changes in the ways in which people watch television, overall viewing on the TV set is resilient; each week 85% of people in the UK who have a TV in their household watch PSB channels. Public service broadcasters remain at the heart of the UK’s television viewing experience.
There is a widening gap between the viewing habits of the youngest and oldest audiences
Individuals in the UK watched 3 hours 32 minutes of measured broadcast TV on a TV set in 2016. This is 4 minutes a day (2%) less than in 2015. However, there are big differences between age groups, and these gaps are widening. Viewers aged 65+ watched an average of 5 hours 44 minutes in 2016, just three minutes less than in 2012; in contrast, 16-24 year olds watched an average of 1 hour 54 minutes in 2016, 43 minutes less than in 2012.
Between 2015 and 2016, average daily viewing among children and 16-24 year olds each fell by 10 minutes, whereas viewing by over-64s increased by 2 minutes.
Watching on-demand television is increasingly popular, especially among younger viewers
Measurements of broadcast television viewing and reach are based on the official industry BARB data, which measures the viewing of scheduled TV programmes on TV sets, and includes time-shifted viewing of these programmes. However, a substantial amount of viewing is not covered by BARB, and this type of viewing is highest among younger people. GfK survey data estimate that there are large daily amounts of time of non-broadcast viewing of video/TV content, especially among viewers in the pre-family life stage, who watch an average of about 2.5 hours per day of non-broadcast content, on any device."
Source:  Ofcom's Public Service Broadcasting Annual Report 2017, 7th July 2017
Full pdf here

Netflix gets more viewing time in the US than Amazon, hulu and YouTube combined

"A ComScore report has revealed that Netflix gets more viewing time in the US than rivals Amazon, Hulu and YouTube combined.
The data shows Netflix holds a 40 per cent share of total viewing hours of an OTT service, with YouTube ranking second place with 18 per cent, Hulu third with 14 per cent and Amazon Video at 7 per cent – a combined 39 per cent.
The report also notes that Netflix’s prime viewing hours are in-line with what many expect from traditional TV consumption — 8pm to 11pm. Additionally, people watch Netflix for an average of one hour and forty minutes a day per household. Netflix is the standard TV choiec in 54 per cent of US homes."

Source:  Advanced Television, 6th July 2017

Google Home is 6x more likely to be able to answer a question that Amazon Alexa

"New York-based 360i has developed software to determine how well Google Home and Amazon Alexa execute exchanges with human beings. The initial results from the agency, which is part of Dentsu Aegis Network, are intriguing.
So far, Google Home is six times more likely to answer your question than Amazon Alexa. It’s relatively surprising, considering that RBC Capital Markets projects Alexa will drive $10 billion of revenue to Amazon by 2020—not to mention the artificial intelligence-based system currently owns 70 percent of the voice market.
360i’s proprietary software asked both devices 3,000 questions to come to the figure. While Amazon Alexa has shown considerable strength in retail search during the agency’s research, Google won the day thanks to its unmatched search abilities."

Source:  AdWeek, 23rd June 2017

The most missed media device in the UK by age, 2017

Source:  Ofcom's Media Use & Attitudes survey, June 2017
Pdf here

Facebook has two billion monthly active users

"Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that 2 billion people are regularly using its flagship service, marching past another milestone in its growth from a college curiosity in the United States to the world's largest social media network.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg disclosed the number to his followers in a Facebook post. "It's an honor to be on this journey with you," he wrote. (bit.ly/2sefWFL)
The user base is bigger than the population of any single country, and of six of the seven continents. It represents more than a quarter of the world's 7.5 billion people.
Facebook defines a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through its website or a mobile device, or used its Messenger app, in the past 30 days. It does not include people who use the Instagram or WhatsApp networks but not Facebook.
The company said in May that duplicate accounts, according to an estimate from last year, may have represented some 6 percent of its worldwide user base.
The social network's user population dwarfs that of similar companies. Twitter Inc reported in April monthly active users of 328 million, while Snap Inc's Snapchat had 166 million daily users at the end of the first quarter.
WeChat, a unit of Tencent Holdings Ltd and a widely used service in China, said in May that it had 938 million monthly active users in the first quarter.
Facebook had 1.94 billion people using its service monthly as of March 31, an increase of 17 percent from a year earlier. It reached 1 billion in October 2012."

Source:  Reuters, 27th June 2017

Zuckerberg's original post is here

YouTube has 1.5bn logged in users each month

"This year at VidCon, YouTube shared some new metrics that really drive home how much it’s dominating mobile video usage and how quickly its service is gaining viewers on TVs.
The highlight was the fact that there are now 1.5 billion logged-in users visiting the site every month. The distinction is important as there are undoubtedly still quite a few folks hopping on YouTube that aren’t necessarily using Google Accounts to do so.
The site announced it hit 1 billion monthly active users in 2013, though that number assumedly related to all visitors, logged-in and not.
Logged-in users spend an average of more than one hour per day watching YouTube just on mobile devices, a pretty daunting number that showcases just how pervasive video has gotten on the mobile web.
“When we compare that [metric] to TV, people — in some countries like the U.S. — watch up to four hours per day, so we think there’s lots of room to get people to watch even more YouTube,” CEO Susan Wojcicki said onstage.
On that note, the company said that the TV screen was their fastest growing medium of consumption, noting that the category was growing 90 percent year-over-year, something that the company’s new YouTube TV service is undoubtedly going to add to. The company didn’t have any new details to share on desktop video viewing habits."

Source:  TechCrunch, 22nd June 2017

Americans spend more time alone as they get older

Source:  The Atlas, June 2017

Cutting ad load times boosts ad revenue

"Cutting down the amount of code on its webpages has helped Meredith make more revenue per visitor.
Meredith, which publishes women’s lifestyle titles including Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle, began an audit of its code a year ago. This led it to remove several vendors and shift code from browsers to servers. The code audit helped Meredith speed up its ad-rendering times by 15-20 percent across desktop and mobile, which, along with an increase in native advertising, contributed to a 20 percent increase in revenue per visit, said Matt Minoff, Meredith’s chief digital officer.
The results were especially dramatic on mobile, where Meredith gets about 60 percent of its traffic and where speed is especially important: There, getting ads to load faster helped drive a 74 percent increase in revenue per visit. Meredith wouldn’t share raw numbers."

Source:  Digiday, 21st June 2017

Mobile screen size correlates to mobile gaming session lengths

Source:  Blog post from Flurry, 20th June 2017

Most time spent watching video is for content over 20 mins

Source:  Ooyala's Video Index Q1 2017, June 2017
Note 1- This is time spent, not number of videos
Note 2 - Ooyala can only measure what is in its network, so as far as I know this does not include YouTube or Facebook.  If it did 'short' videos would surely be much higher

Instagram stories has 250m daily active users

"The company reported Tuesday that Stories, the feature that lets users share videos and posts that disappear after 24 hours, is now used by 250 million people every day. That means Stories added 50 million new users in two months, one month faster than its jump from 150 million to 200 million users.
Instagram is also changing its live video feature so users can now share those live videos to their Stories. Originally, live videos on Instagram disappeared as soon as the broadcast ended, but now they could exist for up to 24 hours."

[...]

"The new milestone means almost 100 million more people use Instagram Stories than use Snapchat, the actual inventor of the Stories format. That’s a bummer for Snapchat, because they clearly invented something that people want to use — Instagram has just scaled it more quickly."

Source:  Recode, 20th June 2017

The revenue from eSports is expected to rise to over $450m in 2017

"The revenue from eSports is expected to rise from $130m (£100m) in 2012 to $465m (£365m) this year, according to Newzoo, the eSports data expert. The global audience will reach 385 million this year, made up of 191 million regular viewers and a further 194 million occasional viewers. ESports stars such as the South Korean player Faker, who has just turned 21, are already paid up to £2m a year, and that’s not including bonuses and sponsorship. But will they ever compete with, say, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo? And should we be worried if they do?"

Source:  The Guardian, 16th June 2017

'TV advertising is 5 times more effective at driving KPIs than online display'

"In a study published by Neustar commissioned by Turner and Horizon Media, TV remains the most effective way to advertise. The research, which extensively examines the effect of advertising across the major marketing channels, showed that dollar for dollar, TV provides the most scale and delivers the highest return on ad spend from both a sales and awareness perspective.
“This research reaffirms that television continues to be the biggest driver of marketing success today, yet there remains a lot of room to grow even further as the industry and consumer habits shift,” said Beth Rockwood, ‎VP, Portfolio Research and Chief of Staff, Turner. “Recognizing that growth opportunity, Turner has been one of the industry’s biggest proponents for reimagining the experience of television – developing new audience targeting methods, as well as forging innovative content partnerships, to deliver highly engaging, unexpected experiences to fans.”
The insights were derived from Neustar’s advanced analytics software, which ran thousands of models spanning key advertising categories — automotive, financial services, CPG, retail, telecom, theatrical movies, QSR and consumer electronics — and used seven years’ worth of data. Ultimately, the research found that for a $1 million investment, television’s lift is consistently 7 times better than paid search and 5 times better than online display advertising."

Source:  Neustar blog, 1st June 2017

Click the link to download the full report.  KPIs included measures like sales and new account opens.

Pokemon GO has sent more than 500 million visitors to McDonalds in Japan

"Pokémon GO-maker Niantic says it has driven 500 million visitors to sponsored locations like McDonald’s Japan where gamers can score a special virtual good. But it never said how much those sponsors paid per visitor delivered by the game.
But in an interview published yesterday by Brazil’s Globo newspaper, Niantic VP of strategic partnerships Mathieu de Fayet said (translated), “The idea is to offer players items at certain locations, and partners pay $0.15 for each visitor attracted to the game. And we’ve already attracted 500 million visitors. In Japan [at the game’s peak last summer], each activated McDonald’s store attracted 2,000 visitors a day.”
However, we followed up with Niantic, and a spokesperson claimed that $0.15 number is incorrect, possibly due to a translation error. The company says “Niantic’s cost per visit (CPV) model visit has partners spending less than $.50 / daily unique visit to sponsored locations.”
At $0.15 per visit the math would indicate that the sponsorships could have racked up $75 million in revenue for Niantic, while the high bound of $0.50 would have generated $250 million.
Given that McDonald’s Japan activated 3,000 stores in the country, that price would mean that at the game’s peak, the fast-food giant would have paid out roughly $900,000 per day to Niantic for the Pokémon GO sponsorship at $0.15 per visitor, or $3 million per day at $0.50 each."

Source:  TechCrunch, 31st May 2017

How the 5 biggest tech companies make money

Source:  Yahoo Finance / Business Insider, 26th May 2017

Sony has sold more than 1 million PlayStation VR headsets

"Sony has now sold more than 1 million PlayStation VR headsets, the company announced today. The news follows a reveal back in February that the PSVR had topped 915,000 units sold since its debut last October. It puts PSVR ahead of direct competitors like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift — according to research firm SuperData, the two sold 420,000 and 243,000 units respectively by the end of 2016 — but still well back of Samsung’s Gear VR, which has sold more than 5 million units globally. Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, admits there’s still plenty of work to be done, especially given the large install base of PS4 owners, which is approaching 60 million. “It’s still just a million units,” he says."

Source:  The Verge, 5th June 2017

Visitors spend approx 35% more time with pages that use Google AMP

"Chartbeat says visitors to web pages that load with Google AMP are spending 35 percent more time with that content on average than with standard mobile web pages.
On average, visitors spend 48.2 seconds with pages found through Google search that load with AMP, compared to 35.6 seconds on average with standard mobile pages found through search.
That means pages that load with accelerated mobile pages software (that’s what AMP stands for) are more valuable to advertisers, because visitors that spend more time with content spend more time scrolling through ads."

Source:  Recode, 5th June 2017