Facebook Closing The Gap With MySpace In The U.S.

Facebook is quickly closing the gap in U.S. usage v. MySpace. Facebook became the largest worldwide social network last April, when they overtook MySpace. MySpace continues to dominate in the U.S., with 75 million monthly visitors (Comscore). A year ago Facebook had just 35 million monthly U.S. visitors, compared to MySpace’s 69 million, meaning MySpace was about twice the size of Facebook in the U.S. Two months ago Facebook had risen to just 40 million users, and MySpace had grown to 75 million, so the ratio was still hovering around 50% (53% to be exact). But in the last two months Facebook has added nearly 10 million monthly U.S. users, surging to 50 million U.S. visitors in November. MySpace has stayed steady, but the Facebook is now 2/3 the size of MySpace in the U.S. If Facebook’s growth rate v. MySpace in the U.S. continues, they’ll overtake them sometime next year.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/11/facebook-testing-even-simpler-sign-up-closing-the-gap-with-myspace-in-the-us/

TV Usage At All-Time High, With Web, Mobile Video Usage Growing

TV, Internet, and mobile usage continues to grow in the U.S., according to a report released today by Nielsen. As of Q3 2008, the average American watched approximately 142 hours of TV per month — five hours more than they watched in a typical month during the same period a year ago. Americans who used the Internet were online 27 hours a month, and people who used a mobile phone spent 3 hours a month watching mobile video. Men were more likely than women to watch via mobile phone, while women were more likely then men to watch video online.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/record-high-tv-use-despite-onlinemobile-video-gains/

Internet Isn’t Recession Proof; Online Advertising Forecast Cut Nearly In Half

Citing severe deterioration in the economy, eMarketer has dramatically reduced its 2009 online ad spending projections to only 8.9 percent growth, compared to the 14.5 percent gains it estimated in August. The revision was prompted by the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers tally of online ad spending, which said last week that web-based advertising grew 11 percent in Q3 to $5.9 billion. And so, eMarketer now expects online ad spend to hit $25.7 billion next year, while it anticipates 2008 to finish up with $23.6 billion. The researcher’s downward revision also notes that recovery will not snap back within the next four years. In 2010, online ad spending growth will return (just barely) into the double digits at 10.9 percent, and in 2013 it will hit 13.5 percent. And paid search, which has been considered the most resilient online ad format, will see a mere 21.4 percent rise in 2008 expenditures. Video will also lose some steam; growth is expected to be strong this year, rising 81 percent, but those rates will drop almost in half next year, when the increase will be 44.9 percent. As for display, it will be up a meager 3.9 percent in 2008 and 6.6 percent in 2010.
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-emarketer-slashes-09-forecast-nearly-in-half-2010-growth-to-hit-double/

75% of Internet Users Participate in Some Form of Social Media

U.S. consumers are flocking to use social networks and other participatory venues to the extent that the activity is now mainstream, according to Forrester Research. The company's polling indicates 2008 has marked significant growth for social media, with a decided majority of users now taking part. A consumer poll done in the second quarter found that 75% of Internet users participate in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Adoption rates vary by the type of activity. For example, Forrester found large growth in participation among those reading blogs and writing product reviews. "Spectator" rates jumped from 48% to 69%. Likewise, those identifying themselves as "critics" increased from 25% to 37%. Yet other areas saw more modest increases. Maintaining RSS feeds and tagging Internet content remain far from the norm. Just 19% fell into that "collector" category, up from 12% a year ago. Rates of content creation have slowed considerably. Those publishing a blog or personal Web page saw incremental growth: 21% versus 18%. In fact, blogging grew just 10%, well behind the 39% growth in starting a social network profile. Still, blogs remain a highly popular form of social media: 48% of respondents said they have read one, a nearly 50% increase from 2007. In another sign that social media has gone mainstream, Forrester found the participation gap narrowing among age groups, though younger demographics still rate higher. Forrester found 35-44-year-olds increasingly entered the ranks of critics, joiners and spectators.
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3i6ebab920204c7b190bd5c2d1acd8d537

New Analytics Tool By YouTube Shows Drop-Off Places in Videos

What if you could learn not just which of your videos are hot on the site, but which specific parts of those videos are hotter than others? What if you could know exactly when viewers tend to leave your videos, or which scenes within a video they watch again and again? This information is now available to all YouTube video uploaders with an innovative new feature for Insight called "Hot Spots." The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. We determine "hot" and "cold" spots by comparing your video's abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards. So what does that mean? Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and many are even rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content's gone cold: many viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/your-youtube-video-hot-or-not.html

MTV Using Visible Measures for Advanced Video Analysis

Visible Measures, a Web video metrics company, announced today that it has closed a deal with MTV Networks that will see all of MTVN’s 340 destination video sites deploy Visible Measures’ metrics technology. The technology measures both viewer engagement (how many times a video is watched all the way through, at what part do viewers tend to drop off, what thumbnails result in the most plays) and video virality (how the it spreads across the Web and where else it is being watched).The multi-year deal will see MTVN use the Visible Measures technology to build end-to-end online video performance metrics that will help MTVN better understand who is watching videos on its service and how to better exploit those users for advertising revenue. Visible Measures’ technology will be deployed on all the major MTVN destinations including, MTV, VH1, CMT, Spike TV, and TV Land, to name a few.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/29/visible-measures-lands-metrics-deal-with-mtv/

NBC Olympics Study Finds Value In Simultaneous Advertising On Internet And TV

NBC Universal will present a sweeping new study this week showing that audiences recall advertisements far more clearly when they are run on both TV and the Internet, findings that could change the way commercial time is bought. Findings from the research, undertaken by NBC during its broadcast of the Olympic Games, will be unveiled on Wednesday to top executives from the advertising industry, which has become increasingly concerned about return on the $70 billion spent annually to buy TV commercial time. NBC found that brand recall -- remembering the name of the product or company -- increased more than 30 percent among viewers when an advertisement ran on TV and the Internet, rather than TV alone; message recall -- remembering the main idea -- increased 41 percent when the ad ran in both places.
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE48M34G20080923?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Records at NBC.com (Tina Fey on SNL), CNBC.com (Financial Crisis), WSJ.com (ditto)

This last weekend’s SNL skit featuring Tina Fey has set video records at NBC.com — 5.7 million views as of Wednesday. Over on CNBC.com, trouble on Wall Street set a new daily record of 14.6 million pageviews. And WSJ.com, which had just launched a new design (talk about timing), set a new daily record of 2 million uniques.
http://www.lostremote.com/2008/09/18/records-at-nbccom-cnbccom-wsjcom/

What is Social Networking? 58% Still Have No Clue

58% of adults worldwide don’t know “what social networking is.” The survey of more than 13,000 people in 17 developed nations also asked if users were losing interest in social networks. According to the report, 36% said “yes,” with interest fading fastest in Japan, Slovakia, and Canada, with 45% of US users supposedly losing their appetite for social networking. Yikes. But now for the good news. The report polled only users 18-65 in age, leaving out the teenagers that make up much of the current audience for social networks – especially the world’s two largest – Facebook and MySpace. Further, considering 58% of respondents have no idea what social networking is, the optimist says that there is still a huge untapped market.
http://mashable.com/2008/09/03/social-networking-survey/

80% of Video Users Stay With Video Despite Pre-Roll Ads

Tremor Media, which is a video advertising network, says that 80% of its users watch pre-roll ads all the way to the content without closing the player. And here’s the surprise: the “completion rate” is nearly the same for both :15 and :30 pre-rolls. “While we wouldn’t suggest (30 seconds) as a best practice, it is proof that audiences are willing to accept pre-roll advertising in exchange for the content they want, on demand,” Tremor writes, noting that the content in its network is “professional produced material.”
http://www.lostremote.com/2008/08/19/video-network-80-watching-pre-rolls/

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/tremor-media-confirms-content-still/story.aspx?guid=%7b73536F69-A8FB-40CA-8616-183C8E2BF6E1%7d&dist=hppr

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing

Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing. (At least among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively. If you break down Facebook’s growth into regions, its presence in North America is still growing at a healthy 38 percent rate (with 49 million visitors a month). Europe (with 35 million visitors a month) is growing nearly ten times as fast. And growth in rest of the world is on an even faster tear (403 percent growth in the Middle East and Africa, 458 percent growth in Asia Pacific, 10,555 percent growth in Latin America), albeit from a smaller base.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/facebook-is-not-only-the-worlds-largest-social-network-it-is-also-the-fastest-growing/

Women Outnumber Men on Most Social Networks

Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49.3 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men. The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were venerable old LinkedIn (where incidentally the 25-34 age group was tops) and a site called Perfspot. Other highlights:
-Women ages 14-24 dominate activity on social networks and have more friends than men of the same ages.
-Men ages 35+ are more active and have more friends than women of the same ages.
-The average social network user has 2-25 friends.
-There are a disproportionately high number of 69 year olds across various social networks.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_networks_women_outnumber_men.php

Online Viewing Leads 20 Percent To Skip Primetime Shows On TV

At industry events, TV network execs often stress that streamed versions of their broadcast programs are additive and not cannibalistic. But a report from audience tracker Integrated Media Measurement Inc. says that at least half of viewers are using the web not just as fill-in or catch-up, but as a TV replacement. Looking at primetime shows across the major networks, IMMI found that viewers see up to 20 percent of their TV shows online, though that varies according to genre and the amount of time the show has been on the air. This amount is higher now and in a few cases, is higher even than DVR viewing of the broadcast shows. Some of the specific findings of the IMMI report (PDF), which examined the consumption of 3,000 teens and adults who made up a single panel across six markets—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Denver. Panel members were given a cell phone that tracked their media use during May:
-- A large chunk of online viewers are not watching for primetime episodes on TV.
-- Comparing online viewers to live viewers, the two largest groups are 25- to 44-year-olds making up 58.4 percent of the audience of streaming primetime shows. Addressing the assumption that 13- to 24-year olds make up the largest viewing block for online TV programming, IMMI’s number finds the exact opposite: only 19.1 percent of 13-24 year olds watching primetime shows on the web.
-- Women (55 percent) are slightly more inclined to watch primetime TV programs online than men (45 percent).
-- Online viewers are also less likely to use a DVR, as 29 percent of live TV viewers say they frequently use a digital recorder versus 22 percent of those who tend to view shows on the web.
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-online-viewing-leads-20-percent-to-skip-tv-shows-altogether-report/

Nielsen Releases Three-Screen Report for the First Time: TV, Internet, Mobile

More media may be vying for the consumer's attention, but contrary to conventional wisdom, they're watching more TV than ever before, according to Nielsen data released Tuesday (July 8). Consumers are also watching more time-shifted TV and using the Internet more. The data, released Tuesday (July 8) for the month of May marks the first time Nielsen has released comparable estimates across all three screens: TV, the Internet and mobile. The average American watched 4 percent more TV this May compared to the same period last year, a total of 127 hours and 15 minutes. Although time-shifted viewing represents less than 5 percent of total viewing, consumers watched more time-shifted TV, 5 hours and 50 minutes compared to 3 hours and 44 minutes, a 56 percent jump."Commercial television is alive and well, growing 1 percent year over year, despite the rapid adoption of other platforms," said John Burbank, chief marketing officer for The Nielsen Co., parent company of Mediaweek. Internet usage was up 9 percent to 26 hours and 26 minutes. The data also showed that wherever there is video, consumers will watch it. Establishing a benchmark, consumers also watched 2 hours and 19 minutes of video on the Internet and 3 hours and 15 minutes on a mobile phone.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/media-agencies-research/e3i3443c86fa467149e85cc0e24e1ccceab

Compete Creates Multiple Metric Tool

Web audience measurement upstart Compete, Inc. has launched a new product, Compete PRO, which it says combines third-party audience measurement, individual Web site analytics and search analytics in a single tool. The Boston, Mass.-based researcher, a subsidiary of TNS media, is one of a handful of companies challenging the likes of Nielsen Online and comScore in the Web metrics arena – though Compete is perhaps better known for producing customized research for publishers and brands. While Compete currently offers a free research tool on its own site, the new Compete PRO is available to marketers and publishers for three different subscription offerings--Intro ($199), Standard ($299), Advanced ($499)--depending on the desired level of detail. Officials at the researcher say that the new tool bundles together multiple sets of actionable reports for its customers. “Compete PRO gives marketers a single place to go for premium-grade online metrics, something that until now was available to only a select few,” said Compete chief marketing officer Stephen DiMarco. For example, customers can user PRO to access unique users and page view data on a million different Web sites, and quickly asses which sites in certain categories are growing the fastest. Or, for heavy search advertisers, they can use the tool to gain insight into competitors’ keyword ad buying strategies.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/metrics/e3ia3b0a6fe9b68eff049e5dbc749582cf7

NBC Debuting New Multi-Media Audience Measurement For Olympics

The exhaustive coverage of the Summer Olympics from Beijing next month — 3,600 hours on television and online — presents NBC Universal with a problem: how to give advertisers a portrait of viewership on seven networks, the Internet (both computers and cellphones) and video-on-demand downloads. Audience measurement has often remained piecemeal and diffuse. NBC’s solution is called the total audience measurement index, or TAMI, which is an amalgam of existing yardsticks from sources like Nielsen Media Research and the lesser-known Omniture and Rentrak. The Olympics will be on NBC, Telemundo, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo and Oxygen, with streaming video, video-on-demand, and statistical, biographical and other information available at nbcolympics.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/sports/olympics/07tami.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Facebook Overtakes MySpace as the #1 Social Network in the World, MySpace Still #1 in US

It was sort of inevitable given Facebook’s monster growth over the last few years, but April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore and shown above. Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month. Most of Facebook’s user growth, however, has been in international markets - MySpace is still dominates Facebook in the U.S. market, with 72 million monthly uniques. Facebook has 36 million monthly uniques, up from 23 million a year ago. Facebook added 75 million monthly uniques over the last twelve month, but just 13 million of those visitors are located in the U.S. MySpace added 5 million U.S. uniques during that period - at this rate it will take 4+ years for Facebook to catch up to MySpace in the U.S. market.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/facebook-no-longer-the-second-largest-social-network/

Within 5 Years, U.S. Users Will Watch More Video Than Sleep

The amount of time Americans spend watching TV and other video content each day is expected to nearly triple over the next five years, matching the amount of time they spend sleeping by 2013, according to a report published on Wednesday by Solutions Research Group. The average U.S. consumer over age 12 with Internet access now spends 6.1 hours daily with video entertainment, up from 4.6 hours in 1996; that number is expected to grow nearly 35% to about 8 hours by 2013. Currently, about 64% of viewing time is TV-related, including live, DVR and video-on-demand, or 42% among those ages 12-24. TV's share of the total entertainment pie is expected to drop from 64% today to 47% by 2013. The report's authors credit the coming overall increase in video viewing to factors that include greater access to and use of Web video, significantly increased penetration for laptops, mobile video devices and Internet-enabled devices such as the iPhone.
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2008/06/11/report:-u.s.-daily-video-viewing-hours-match-sleep-2013

TV, Meet the Web. Google Analytics Starts Measuring TV Ads

Google’s experiment with selling and measuring TV ads on the Dish satellite network just got a lot more interesting. A month ago, Google incorporated the ability to buy TV ads into AdWords. Now, it is taking all of that ad impression data and layering it on top of Google Analytics. This is very basic and imperfect, but it hints at the future of how advertising will be measured: all in the same place. Within Google Analytics, which many companies already use as a dashboard to measure their Website traffic and the effectiveness their online Google ad campaigns, it is now possible to also measure the effectiveness of your Google TV ads. It shows you how many times your ad was seen on TV, and overlays that on top of a graph showing how many people visited your Website. While the two are not always directly correlated, if the point of the TV ads is to drive Website traffic, at least advertisers can now eyeball whether any corresponding spikes occur after they run their TV ads. Google Analytics also displays the cost of the ads, how many times each one played, and calculates a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) so that advertisers can roughly compare the return they get from TV ads versus Web ads. Google can only place TV ads on Dish boxes at this point, so its reach is limited. But within that sandbox, Google is showing the way that advertising ought to be measured.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/06/tv-meet-the-web-google-analytics-starts-measuring-tv-ads/

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/06/track-online-impact-of-google-tv-ads.html

ComScore Buys Mobile Research Firm M:Metrics

Well-known Internet measurement firm comScore said today that it has acquired M:Metrics, a leader in the mobile measurement business, for $44.3 million in cash and the issuance of approximately 50,000 options to purchase shares of comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) common stock. The sale of M:Metrics is a testament that mobile is no longer a niche, but a standalone industry that must be measured and tracked much like TV and Internet audiences are today. In addition, one of the hurdles frequently mentioned as a reason why mobile has yet to really skyrocket is the lack of a trusted measurement standard. Perhaps that will change, not only with the sale of M:Metrics, but with other consolidation. About a year ago, Nielsen, the big media and measurement firm, solidified its position in mobile by paying $440 million for M:Metrics’s competitor Telephia. Its research reports the latest trends that operators, marketers and publishers all use to direct their businesses. For example, when people were curious about mobile browsing habits, it reported that in the U.S., consumers spent more time on Craigslist than any other site. In determining whether the iPhone was living up to its hype, the company said the iPhone was the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web. Over the last year, it’s also reported that the football season drove more mobile Web usage; that more camera phones were being sold and that mobile music was growing.
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-mobile-research-firm-mmetrics/

http://www.mmetrics.com/