Social networking dominates the time Americans spend online

August 2, 2010 | Dean Takahashi

In a big shift from just a few years ago, Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time on social networking sites and blogs, according to research released today by The Nielsen Company. A year ago, only 15.8 percent of time spent online was devoted to social networks. Online games came in second in terms of time spent online, accounting for 10.2 percent of time spent on the internet, compared to 9.3 percent a year ago.
One of the big losers in the survey was email, which now accounts for only 8.3 percent of time spent online, compared to 11.5 percent a year ago. Another loser was portals, 4.4 percent now compared to 5.5 percent a year ago. Instant messaging was also down at 4.0 percent, compared to 4.7 percent a year ago.
Americans spend about a third of their online time communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.


“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing, leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.
It’s worth nothing that online games overtook personal email in the past year, moving into second place behind social networks. Online video and movies also saw significant growth, now at 3.9 percent compared to 3.5 percent a year ago. During June, more than 10 billion videos were streamed to web users in the U.S. On average, Americans spend 3 hours and 15 minutes per month watching online video.
All of this news is great for social network companies such as Facebook and Twitter. It’s also good for social gaming firms such as Zynga and online game companies such as Activision Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft. But it explains why email and portal companies such as MSN and Yahoo are having a tough time.



On mobile phones, email is still king, accounting for 41.6 percent of mobile internet time, up from 37.4 percent a year ago. Social networking time on mobile phones was up this year. But portals are the second-heaviest activity on the mobile internet, accounting for 11.6 percent of time, down from 14.3 percent a year ago. Social networking is at 10.5 percent, up from 8.3 percent a year ago.
Music and video/movies saw 20 percent increases on mobile during the year. But news/current events and sports sites saw more than 20 percent drops. Oddly enough, there was no separate section for games, and entertainment was a fairly small part of the overall pie.

  

Continue

Nielsen’s New App Playbook Debunks Mobile App Store Myth

March 24, 2010

Mobile carrier app stores are a long way from dead. Despite the fanfare around application stores tied to specific mobile devices such as iPhones and BlackBerries, a new Nielsen survey finds ongoing loyalty to carrier stores.  As of the end of 2009, half of all applications users were accessing carrier app stores according to Nielsen’s new App Playbook.

That said, the Apple App Store was the clear leader in preferred application stores in the United States and, combined with the dedicated AT&T Application Store, devices running on the AT&T network have the most popular stores.

The relatively new BlackBerry App World Store was the second most popular app store due to BlackBerry’s industry-leading installed base.

Carrier application stores come in next on the rankings due to the size of their subscriber base, suggesting users of more standard feature phones drove much of this ongoing popularity.

Nielsen’s App Playbook  surveys more than 4,000 application downloaders in the United States every six months about their mobile application usage. It allows companies in the mobile ecosphere to monitor the transition and growth of the application market as mobile users shift from feature phones to smartphones.

Not surprisingly smartphone users were generally using applications more than feature phone users – only 12% of feature phone owners have downloaded an app in the past 30 days while 46% of smartphone owners have —  with application usage driven mostly by the iPhone and Android devices. This was due to the size of the application universe offered on both platforms, which was significantly larger than that of the other platforms. BlackBerry’s relatively low number was due to the significant corporate user share, which often locks the device and only allows corporate IT to install applications on the device.

Among recent acquirers, BlackBerry continued to be the market share leader among smartphones in the U.S., while Apple’s iPhone continued to increase its market share, especially after the launch of the iPhone 3GS in June 2009. The launch of a significant number of Android devices in the latter part of 2009, drove its market share to 5% at the end of the year and set it on a promising trajectory for 2010. Both Microsoft and Palm were unable to capitalize on their new launches in 2009 of Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 and the Palm Pre and Pixi, losing 7% market share and 4% market share respectively. Symbian, one of the leading smart phone operating systems globally continues to struggle to make significant inroads in the United States.

With only eight Android devices launched in 2009 – and the Droid launching late in the year – the Android Market Store saw modest popularity.   Since then, a large number of Android devices launched, and the popularity of the Android Market Store is expected to increase as a result. This is further illustrated by the high satisfaction scores the Android Market received in the Nielsen study, second only to the Apple App Store. The Palm Application Store seems to be languishing due to the relatively modest success of the new Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, combined with a comparatively low number of applications available in its app store. The same is true for the Windows Marketplace, which is also suffering from a low number of applications and dwindling market share for Windows Mobile devices.

The Apple App Store and the Android Market Place have a sizable lead in terms of satisfaction compared to the other application stores. We see similar sized leads for both the Apple App Store and the Android Market Place when it comes to satisfaction with the pricing of the apps. While the often-overlooked carrier application stores are significantly behind the two leaders in terms of satisfaction, they are still marginally ahead of the BlackBerry App World and Windows Marketplace. It will be interesting to see how the just-announced revamp of the Windows Marketplace will impact satisfaction scores and what RIM will do in their next iteration of App World.

About Nielsen’s App Playbook
Insights from Nielsen’s App Playbook were gathered from 4,265 respondents who had downloaded an application in the past 30 days, 2,351 of which owned a smartphone and 1,914 of which owned a feature phone.  The respondents were identified through Nielsen’s Mobile Insights syndicated tracking study, which surveys 80,000 mobile subscribers per quarter.  The App Playbook sample is weighted back to the total qualified population from the Nielsen Mobile Insights survey.  The survey covers a wide range of topics related to applications, including audience profiling, market sizing, download and purchase behavior, app store channel, app usage and satisfaction.

Continue

Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011

For more info: Contact The Nielsen Company

Roger Entner, Senior Vice President, Research and Insights, Telecom Practice

The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to  friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of respondents to a Nielsen survey indicated that their next device will be a smartphone. If we combine these intentional data points with falling prices and increasing capabilities of these devices along with a explosion of applications for devices, we are seeing the beginning of a groundswell. This increase will be so rapid, that by the end of 2011, Nielsen expects more smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones.

The Smartphone User
Slightly more males than females are getting smartphones (53% versus 47%) which is what we would expect for technical early adopter products. In terms of demographics, Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone than what their share of population would indicate, which is a trend we see in the adoption of other mobile data services. While smartphones started out in the business segment, two-third of today’s buyers of smartphones are personal users.

Loyalty
In the last six months, roughly 77% of new smartphone buyers remained loyal to their wireless operator, while 18% switched to a new provider to get their new smartphone with the remaining percentage made up of first-time smartphone buyers. Interestingly enough, the percentage of people who switched carriers and got a new smartphone is not higher than that of the average wireless subscriber.

This indicates that the portfolio of the wireless carriers in general is robust enough to prevent any wide-spread smartphone flight from one carrier to the other, with very few exceptions. The added bonus for wireless carriers is that smartphone owners are significantly more satisfied (81%) with their device than feature phone owners (66%).

Features, features, features
Smartphones show higher application usage than feature phones even at the basic built-in application level. During Nielsen’s Mobile Insights survey we asked the respondents about features they’ve used in the last 30 days. The good news for the smartphone market is that people are actually taking advantage of the device capabilities.

The percentage of people who use their phone for only voice communications drops from 14% among new feature phone owners to 3% of smartphone owners. The use of the built-in camera and video capability jumps by almost 20% for both categories, due to the generally better quality and user friendliness of the features. Smartphones also often have a better speaker which translates into more frequent usage from about half of feature phone owners to about two-thirds of smartphone owners. Not surprisingly the use of Wi-Fi increases 10-fold from 5% for feature phone owners to 50% for smartphone users to satisfy the need for fast downloads.

Continue

Top U.S. Web Brands and Site Usage: December 2009

January 14, 2010

The Nielsen Company today reported December 2009 data for the Top Parent Companies/Divisions and Top Web Brands, as well as average Internet usage.

Top 10 Parent Companies/Divisions for December 2009 (U.S., Home and Work)
Rank	Parent	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1	Google	155,683	2:21:53
2	Microsoft	135,876	2:03:01
3	Yahoo!	130,229	2:56:27
4	Facebook	109,905	6:24:17
5	AOL LLC	88,347	2:25:09
6	News Corp. Online	80,152	1:18:15
7	Amazon	74,428	0:35:26
8	InterActiveCorp	71,564	0:15:44
9	eBay	67,979	1:23:31
10	Apple Computer	63,825	1:27:45
Source: The Nielsen Company

Example:  The data indicates that 63.8 million home and work Internet users visited at least one of the Apple Computer-owned sites or launched an Apple Computer-owned application during the month, and each person spent, on average, a total of 1 hour, 27 minutes and 45 seconds at one or more of their sites or applications.

The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single company or division. The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.

Top 10 Web Brands for December 2009 (U.S., Home and Work)
Rank	Brand	Unique Audience (000)	Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1	Google	146,700	1:40:55
2	Yahoo!	129,032	2:56:35
3	Facebook	109,905	6:24:17
4	MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	108,174	1:56:43
5	YouTube	92,510	1:09:38
6	Microsoft	91,366	0:44:39
7	AOL Media Network	88,347	2:25:09
8	Amazon	66,472	0:33:37
9	Apple	63,825	1:27:45
10	Fox Interactive Media	61,518	1:31:50
Source: The Nielsen Company

Average U.S. Internet Usage, Combined Home & Work, Month of December 2009
Metrics	Dec-09
Sessions/Visits per Person	51
Domains Visited per Person	83
Web Pages per Person	2,614
PC Time per Person	64:09:12
Duration of a Web Page Viewed	0:00:56
Active Digital Media Universe	195,738,178
Current Digital Media Universe Estimate	234,802,000
Source: The Nielsen Company

Continue

What’s Your Online Content Worth? Global Consumers Say: It Depends

January 5, 2010

Across countries, demographics and content types, consumers have diverse attitudes about paying for content online.

Nic Covey, Director of Cross-Platform Insights, The Nielsen Company

The big question in the new Internet decade is whether consumers will pay for content online.  It turns out that millions of global consumers are, in fact, willing to pay up… but not for everything.  For example, consumers are three times as likely to pay for online music than for a blog.

Consumers weigh in
Nielsen recently conducted a global survey of more than 27,000 consumers in 54 countries to examine attitudes about paying for online content and to determine which content types consumers were most willing to support financially.  The findings show that many consumers are willing to pay for online content or are open to increased advertising to pick up the costs, but attitudes vary greatly by geography, demographics and content type.

Paying for (perceived) quality
Consumers show a higher propensity to pay for music, movies, games and professionally produced video than for podcasts, blogs or consumer generated video.  This validates the notion that consumers globally still place more value on content produced by “professionals” than by other consumers.  Likewise, they are more inclined to spend money on what they already pay for, rather than on what they currently get for free.

Percent of global online consumers who have paid OR would consider paying for various types of content online – Fall 2009
Content
Music	57%
Theatrical movies	57%
Games	51%
Professional produced video (including current television shows)	50%
Magazines	49%
Newspapers	42%
Internet-only news sources	36%
Radio (Music)	32%
Podcasts	28%
Social communities	28%
Radio (News/Talk)	26%
Consumer-generated video	24%
Blogs	20%
Source: The Nielsen Company.  n=27,548

While it may seem obvious that consumers are more willing to pay for professional content than amateur, the reality shouldn’t be taken for granted: to consumers, not all content is created equal.

Bring on the ads (in the Middle East, at least)
Overall willingness to pay for online content may surprise some, but more surprising yet is the extent to which consumers in some markets are still open to more advertising.  Nearly half (47%) of global respondents said they would put up with more ads to subsidize free content, but that willingness swings by market.

While 57% of respondents in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan are open to the more advertising – as are 55% of those in Asia Pacific – just 40% of North America respondents and 39% of European respondents agree.

Later this month we’ll release the broader findings of this study.  The paper will reveal many of the regional, demographic and content nuances of willingness to pay for online content.  The key takeaway is this: across geographies, demographics and content types, consumers think very differently about how they’ll pay for content.  Accordingly, monetization models will have to be flexible – there will have to be more, not fewer, options to supporting the cost of content.

Predictions

• The future of monetization will include a much broader range of revenue models than exist today
• Good and useful content will always find patrons.

A timely conversation
On Friday, January 8, at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, I’ll join a panel of colleagues to discuss “Predictions and Opportunities for Media Monetization.” CES is an appropriate place to have this conversation: there we’ll see the latest tech gadgets that will offer consumers even more anytime, anywhere access to both free, and paid content.

Continue

Talking Back – Top Five Advertising Trends

December 17, 2009

The overall advertising environment in 2009 was fairly gloomy with slashed budgets and revised strategies to address the new reality. However, that didn’t stop the industry from evolving, and the lessons learned will likely pay-off in the year ahead. For example, advertisers started to look at the need for accountability metrics beyond the simple “click-through” and on to campaign-specific performance. They also started to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer generated media to bring consumers closer to a product or brand.

Top Advertising Trends for 2010

1. Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.
2. New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.
3. More cross-media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.
4. Commercialization of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.
5. More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of Web development.

2010 U.S. Outlook

Part 1: Cross Media

• Big Screen, Smart Screen, Small Screen: Top 5 Cross-Media Trends
• You Can Take It With You: Future Trends In Media

---

Part 2: Consumer

• Winner Winner Chicken Dinner – Top 5 Consumer Goods Spending Trends
• Innovation Creates Opportunities for CPG Growth
• Aging Puts a Wrinkle in U.S. Marketplace

---

Part 3: Advertising

• Talking Back – Top Five Advertising Trends
• Get Ready for the Audience-Centric Web
• What Would John Wanamaker Say Today?

---

Part 4: Entertainment

• There’s No Business Like Show Business – Top Five Entertainment Trends
• Game On – The World is Watching More Than Ever
• Video Games in Play

For more information: contact us

Continue