Dubbed “The Queen of the Net,” Mary Meeker has been in Silicon Valley since 2010. In 2015, Meeker was one of only five women to make the Forbes’ Midas list of top venture capitalists. But what she is best known for are her annual reports on the state of the web. These reports are followed globally for insights into the future of the industry and latest digital trends.
Meeker forms these reports by analyzing how people around the world use the Internet. The list below shows some trends to focus on for digital advertising in 2015.
1. Mobile online use is growing at a faster pace than Internet usage in general. There are currently 2.8 billion Internet users, up 8 percent from 2014, and 2.1 billion mobile internet users (an increase of 23%).
2. Mobile online usage increased by 69% last year. 55% of mobile data is from video streaming.
3. Americans spent 20 minutes online with a mobile device in 2008. In 2015, that number increased to close to three hours. Users are now spending more time online with mobile devices than they are with laptops.
4. Mobile usage is now 24% of the time spent with media but makes up only 8% of ad dollars spent.
5. Facebook and Twitter are still growing, but not as fast as they used to. The average revenue per user and monthly user growth is slowing. Year over year user growth was 13% last quarter, Facebook’s slowest user growth ever.
6. Twitter user growth was 18%, down from the 25% last year.
7. Mobile advertising grew 34% year over year, while desktop digital advertising only grew 11%.
8. Mobile ads are getting more traction but only for short times. Four new styles of mobile advertising:
- Pintrest’s Cinematic Pins
- Vessel 5-second video ads
- Facebook Carousel ads
- Google local inventory ads
9. Mobile optimized buy buttons have shown up across Google, Facebook and Twitter.
10. Vertical screens and vertical content are becoming more important now. 29% of users average screen time a day is spent looking at smartphones. In 2010 vertical screen usage was only 5%.
11. Snapchat uses vertical ads and states their users are nine times more likely to watch vertical ads till the end versus their horizontal adds.
12. Snapchat is growing. With 100 million daily users the app generates 2 billion video views a day.
13. Facebook gets 4 billion video views a day, 75% are from smartphones.
14. Men are pinning more with male fashion pins up 100% over a year ago. Car and motorcycle pins were up 120%
15. Live streaming video game channels are becoming a top entertainment choice. Twitch and video game streaming source now has 100 million users.
16. Twitch can draw 1 million viewers at the same time.
17. Top five most important social networks for teenagers in order, are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Tumblr.
18. E-commerce revenue was up, with 300 billion in spending representing 9% of retail sales. In 1998 E-sales accounted for less than 1% of retail revenue.
19. Alibaba, The Chinese e-commerce giant, has more than $350 billion worth of merchandise compared to the 100 billion of Amazon.
20. On-demand platforms are growing. Airbnb , has booked 35 million guests – 25 million in the last year. Uber drivers have increased to more than 1 million. Etsy now has 1.4 million sellers up 26%.
Garett Sloane, These Are the Digital Trends Everyone in Tech and Advertising Needs to Know. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/these-are-digital-trends-everyone-tech-and-advertising-needs-know-165017
Mary Meeker, Internet trends 2015. http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends