Key Takeaways from the Internet Trends Report

From YouTube’s decreasing share of mobile traffic to the personalization of voice-activated devices, the newly released Internet Trends report offers unique insight into the digital advertising industry. Thanks to Adweek, marketers do not need to read through the 355-page report for the key takeaways.

1)    Dip in Smartphone Sales

In 2016, smartphones saw not only a decrease in sales but also in user-base growth. Globally 2.8 billion people own smartphones. While they remain extremely popular, the user-base only grew by 12 percent in 2016 compared to 25 percent in 2015.

2)    Increased Time Spent on Mobile

Adults spend an average of 5.6 hours per day consuming digital media. The majority of that time (3.1 hours) is spent on mobile devices while desktops account for 2.2 hours. The remaining 0.4 hours come from other devices.

3)    Internet vs. TV Ad Spend

The total Internet ad spend is growing faster than television ad spend, and 85 percent of Internet ad spend is through Google and Facebook. Compared to its 2015 ad revenue, Facebook experienced a 62 percent growth in 2016.

4)    Voice is the Next Frontier

Between the fourth quarter of 2016 and the first of 2017, Amazon’s voice-enabled assistant, Echo, gained 3 million users. With its increasing personalization, voice and visual recognition are considered to be the “next frontiers in search and discovery” by Photon’s VP of marketing, Michael Levine.

5)    Ad Blocking on the Rise

With about 640 million devices utilizing ad blockers in 2016, marketers have the right to remain wary of the software.

Ad Blocking: The Hottest Digital Topic

Years ago the “hot topic” in media was the integration of DVR’s in every household. Now, the buzz word has switched to “Ad Blocking”. It seems like everyone in the industry is perplexed with the concept and anxious about finding a solution to overcome this trend.

From logical thinking, one would assume that ad blocking is mostly utilized by younger millennials who are tech savvy. The largest concern with that is that millennials are becoming young adults, newlyweds, new parents, and leaders in the society.  Soon this Ad Blocking generation will be raising their kids to do the same.

eMarketer dug deeper into this topic and reported that 63.2 million people use an ad blocker on their desktop/laptop while only 20.7 million people use the software on their smartphone.

Catchpoint Systems also did a study regarding ad blocking and reported that for many ad heavy sites, blocking software slowed page load times for users. However, sites like Southwest saw an improvement resulting in quicker load times.

Few websites, like Forbes, have taken action against ad blockers. Forbes requires a user to turn off their software or log in to their account to enter the site. Other platforms like Pandora provide users with an ad-free option with a subscription.

Just like with the integration of DVR, marketers will have to transform the way they serve ads in order to reach those who intentionally block them. It is likely that in the near future, publishers will adapt a format similar to that of Forbes to ensure that they have revenue coming in from the advertisements.

As with much of the advertising world, this is a growing and evolving subject. We look forward to learning more about how ad blocking will affect the digital medium.

Is Ad Blocking a Major Concern for Advertisers?

Ad blocking may be a foreign term for many internet users, but that may change in the near future. There are many different kinds of software that allow customers to keep advertisements from appearing during their internet experience. With this software, an internet user’s experience has no pop-up, video ads, banners, or display ads of any kind.

This might sound peachy keen from a user standpoint, however advertisers might not feel the same way. The University of Oxford did a study that shows 41% of PC users and 11% of mobile users in the United States use ad blocking software regularly.

PageFair/Adobe did another study that looked at a more international scale. In Europe the amount of users using ad blocking software varies from 8.9% in Slovakia all the way to 37.5% in Greece.

Surprisingly enough, advertisers aren’t too concerned with this new ad blocking software. The following graph from eMarketer shows data collected from a survey by Strata that found that only 9% of advertisers say they have a major concern.

While the usage of ad blocking may be on the rise, it is comforting to know that your everyday user is not the prime culprit in this activity. PageFair/Adobe concludes that gaming and technology are amongst the top activities for which ad blocking is used. This tells advertisers that it is the more tech savvy user taking advantage of ad blocking and not your everyday user. At the bottom of the list sits shopping and search engines where few users utilize ad block. This is good news for advertisers as those are normally the targeted audience for advertisements.

Although ad blocking is on the rise, advertisers see no threat to getting their message across… yet.