US Digital Media Review and Trends: Comscore Data

Com Score 2009 Us Digital Year In Review

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Comscore data recently released their latest data on the US digital marketing. The Comscore data offers an overview of the prevailing trends in digital media and examines the trends in U.S. digital Media and Consumer Internet usage across various verticals like search activity, e-commerce, online video consumption, online advertising, and mobile, and what digital strategies will be most important for success in 2010.

Some of the key highlights in US media Consumption are

1)U.S. e-commerce spending reached $209.6 billion in 2009, down 2 percent versus 2008 and the firstyear on record with negative growth rates. Travel e-commerce spending dropped 5 percent to $79.8 billion, while retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending remained virtually flat at $129.8 billion.Throughout most of the decade, retail e-commerce spending saw growth rates in excess of 20 percent annually

2)The search market grew 16 percent in 2009, led by a 6-percent gain in unique searchers and a 10-percent gain in search queries per searcher. Google and Bing were the two major players fighting it amongst themselves.

3) More people started using Social networking to keep in touch ,as nearly 4 out of 5 Internet users visiting a social networking site on a monthly basis with Facebook and Twitter leading the growth.Social Networking now accounts for 11 percent of all time spent online in the U.S.,making it one of the most engaging activities across the Web. Much of Twitter’s extraordinary audience growth occurred during the first few months of 2009, at one point jumping from 4 million visitors to 17 million visitors between February and March,2009

4) In spite of the commonly held perception about display ads becoming blind spots ,Display ad impressions actually grew 21 percent in 2009 .This Growth was driven by an 8-percent increase in ad reach and a 12-percent increase in average frequency.

5)On the publisher side, Yahoo! Sites served the most display ads in the past 12 months at 521.2 billion, followed by Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace.com) with 367.6 billion and Facebook.com with 329.6 billion. April

6)Mobile phone network providers AT&T Inc. (84.3 billion ad impressions) and Verizon (56.8 billion impressions) ranked as the top U.S. online display advertisers over the last 12 months, while Sprint also ranked in the top ten with 26.2 billion impressions.

7)On the publisher side, Yahoo! Sites served the most display ads in the past 12 months at 521.2 billion, followed by Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace.com) with 367.6 billion and Facebook.com with 329.6 billion. April.

8)In December 2009, 86 percent of the total U.S. online population viewed video content.Six out of seven U.S. Internet users now view online video content in a month, with YouTube and Hulu continuing to lead the growth.The average online viewer consumed 187 videos in December 2009 (up 95 percent vs. year ago), while the duration of the average video viewed grew from 3.2 to 4.1 minutes.

9)Smartphone ownership increased smartly in 2009 from 11 percent to 17 percent of mobile users, while 3G phone ownership increased from 32 percent to 43 percent