These Are the Digital Trends Everyone in Tech and Advertising Needs to Know
One of the most-watched digital trends reports of the year is out—Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends—and it shows just how much room mobile advertising has to grow. Meeker runs digital investments for top Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and every year she releases a comprehensive breakdown of the entire Web landscape.
Meeker looks at how people around the world use the Internet, how many are on mobile, how they spend their time online, and which companies and industries stand to gain the most.
Here’s what you should be focused on this year in digital and on mobile:
Mobile Internet use is growing faster than Internet usage in general: There are 2.8 billion Internet users, up 8 percent from 2014, and 2.1 billion mobile Internet users, an increase of 23 percent.
Mobile data usage rose 69 percent last year, and 55 percent of mobile data traffic is from video.
In 2008, Americans spent 20 minutes a day on average with the mobile Web. This year, they spend close to three hours, more time than they spend on laptops.
The mobile ad industry is still short $25 billion. Mobile commands 24 percent of time spent with media but accounts for only 8 percent of ad dollars spent.
Facebook and Twitter are growing but not like they used to. Revenue per user and monthly user growth is slowing. Facebook revenue per user is at $9.36, up 29 percent over last year, but growth neared 60 percent last year. Year-over-year user growth was 13 percent last quarter, the slowest growth ever.
Twitter revenue per user was $5.14, an increase of 45 percent over last year, whereas growth was 80 percent last year at this time. User growth was 18 percent, down from 25 percent a year ago.
The mobile ad industry as a whole grew 34 percent year over year, while desktop digital advertising only grew 11 percent.
Mobile ads are getting more motion but in short bursts. There are four new styles of ad: Pinterest’s Cinematic Pins, Vessel 5-second video ads, Facebook Carousel ads, Google Local Inventory Ads.
Buy btns equal optimized for mobile, and they have popped up across Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Vertical screens and vertical content are a big deal now with 29 percent of people’s daily screen time spent looking at smartphones. Five years ago, time spent in front of such vertical-oriented screens was only 5 percent of overall viewing time.
Snapchat is all about vertical ads and says users watch them until the end nine times more frequently than they watch horizontal ads in its app.
Snapchat now has 100 million daily active users, and the app generates 2 billion video views a day. One event like Coachella can draw 40 million video views to Snapchat Live Stories.
Facebook gets 4 billion video views a day, 75 percent of which are from phones.
Pinterest is getting manlier with the number of men’s fashion pins up almost 100 percent over a year ago—car and motorcycle pins were up 120 percent.
Watching video games like it’s TV is becoming a top entertainment choice. Video game streaming site Twitch has 100 million monthly users now, an increase of or 122 percent.
Twitch can draw 1 million viewers at the same time.
Teens continue to be trendsetters. The five most important social networks for U.S. teens, in order, are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Tumblr.
E-commerce is starting to pick up, with $300 billion in spending last year representing 9 percent of retail sales. E-sales accounted for less than 1 percent of retail revenue in 1998.
Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, has more than $350 billion worth of merchandise on its platform. Amazon has closer to $100 billion worth.
Online, on-demand platforms are growing. Airbnb, for instance, has booked 35 million guests—25 million of those were in the last year. Uber drivers are up sixfold to more than 1 million. Etsy has 1.4 million sellers, up 26 percent.
The average Etsy seller makes $1,400 a year. The average Airbnb host makes $7,700 a year in New York.
China is huge and can be big for content. A documentary about smog, Under the Dome, got 200 million views in three days, and 41 percent came from the messaging app WeChat.
WeChat can be used for government services, too, in China, where it has 550 million users.
India will be the next frontier, opening opportunities for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Amazon. Read more here
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