Tag: comScore

UK Leads Europe In Smartphone Adoption

Smartphone adoption in the EU5 (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 32 percent compared to a year ago to 51.6 million subscribers, according to a new report from comScore.

Growth can bee seen across the range of monthly subscription fees, but the mid to low tier is growing faster that high tier subscriptions in each of the EU5 markets.

The U.K. market has a significant lead in the growth of smartphone adoption over the past year, growing 70 percent to more than 11 million subscribers. France ranks second in growth with the number of smartphone subscribers up 48 percent to 7 million. Italy has the largest number of smartphone subscribers overall (15 million) but showed the smallest growth in the market at 11 percent.

"Smartphones are generally seen as luxury devices that come with big price tags and high monthly tariffs, yet the largest segment of the market and the one demonstrating greatest momentum is actually the low to mid tier," says Alistair Hill, senior mobile analyst at

comScore

.

"The growth in these tiers suggests that as smartphones become more affordable to the majority of European consumers, their proliferation will increase considerably and lead to a surge in mobile content and data consumption. Such market dynamics offer substantial opportunity for different players in the mobile ecosystem — from operators and manufacturers to publishers and advertisers — and underscore the importance of competing for customers now to engender long-term loyalty."

March 31, 2010
Google, Bing Make Small Gains

February was a quiet month for the search market; we’re not going to suggest any companies either break out the champagne or fire their CEOs as a result of the small changes that took place. Still, for those who are curious, comScore believes it was Google and Bing that came out looking like winners.

Google managed to increase its share of the U.S. search market to 65.5 percent, up from 65.4 percent in January, according to comScore’s data. Bing, meanwhile, accomplished a more impressive feat (in overall terms, and especially in relation to its size) by grabbing 0.2 percent of market share.

That put Bing in control of 11.5 percent of the market, up from 11.3 percent the month before.

Yahoo’s share of the search market then decreased, heading from 17.0 percent to 16.8 percent. Which is embarrassing, but not yet catastrophic, as the company’s partnership with Microsoft moves towards completion.

The interesting thing will be if Bing and Yahoo keep trading share. Also, of course, if Google keeps increasing its dominance. We’ll be sure to cover comScore’s next report to see if any trends have emerged.

March 10, 2010
Facebook And Twitter See Big Mobile Gains

Facebook and Twitter access via mobile browsers has grown by triple-digits in the past year, according to the latest research from comScore.

More than a quarter (30.8%) of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago. Access to Facebook via mobile browser climbed 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter soared 347 percent.

"Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

"Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

In January, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Much of the growth is due to smartphone owners accessing social networking sites on their mobile browsers. Just 6.8 percent of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.

Access to the most popular social networking sites via mobile browser continues to see significant growth. In January, 25. 1 million mobile users accessed Facebook, up 112 percent from the previous year. MySpace attracted 11.4 million users about half that of Facebook during the month.

Facebook’s mobile browser audience surpassed MySpace in February 2009, three months earlier than the Facebook audience climbed past that of MySpace on the PC-based Internet in May 2009.

Twitter, which has experienced solid growth in both mobile and PC-based visitation, attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January, up 347 percent over the previous year.

March 3, 2010
comScore Launches Platform To Help Publishers Optimize Ads

comScore said today it has launched comScore Audience Advantage, described as a "digital audience optimization platform" that allows publishers to provide advertisers and media planners with the ability to reach their most valuable audiences.

comScore Audience Advantage uses proprietary audience scoring algorithms to determine optimal audiences for advertisers using predictive variables as inputs. These variables come from a variety of observable behaviors online as measured via comScore’s opt-in research panel, including site visitation, search activity, video views, advertising engagements, online purchases or any other number of behaviors that may relevant to an advertiser.

The Audience Advantage platform does use cookies to create it s predictive algorithms. Instead, they are butyl using the actual observed behavior and characteristics of the opt-in comScore panelists. comScore says its platform can also use third-party databases that are integrated with its research panel to provide anonymous offline purchase behavior as another important predictive input to these algorithms.

"Audience Advantage offers significant value creation for the online advertising ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders," said Erin Hunter, comScore executive vice president.

"Publishers will be able to demonstrate higher value in the campaigns they deliver, thereby justifying higher CPMs, while advertisers will be able to minimize wasted impressions and reduce the total cost of advertising outlays. It is truly a win-win for the digital advertising industry."

Using all available behaviors as inputs, Audience Advantage determines a predictive score for various audience segments. Participating publishers use this score to anonymously identify and deliver to advertisers "lookalike" audiences from the behavior they observe among their own site visitors.

Campaigns can be planned to target only 5 or 10 percent of consumers most likely to a purchase a particular brand with the goal of reinforcing loyalty, or they can be planned against a larger segment of consumers who are dual brand buyers with the objective of switching to the advertiser’s brand.

February 22, 2010
Don’t Count Out Facebook as a Competitor to Google

In case you were wondering, Facebook is pretty popular. Google is of course the undisputed king of search market share, but Facebook has the edge in some areas. Social media is the obvious area. While Google is hoping to make some serious headway here with Buzz, Facebook is far and away the dominant being in the world of social networks.

Compete shared some data with us that emphasizes just how big Facebook is, and just how seriously it should be taken. If these stats from Facebook weren’t enough for you, Compete points out that Facebook has surpassed Yahoo as the #2 site online in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors, just under Google.

In December, according to Compete, Facebook’s unique visitors in the U.S. had increased by over 121%. That’s pretty incredible, because I seem to recall Facebook being pretty popular in late 2008 too.

In terms of social media sites, none of the others even come close in the U.S. – not even the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube:

So Facebook is already bigger than the second largest search engine. Add to that, the fact that search on Facebook itself is rising. According to comScore, Facebook’s search query percentage increased by 13% from December to January, growing to 395 million searches:

Greg Sterling notes, the numbers in the chart "are likely internal searches on Facebook for content or friends, rather than web search. This is not the same thing as people conducting searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing more generally. And 13 percent growth is certainly strong, but not "phenomenal.’"

Facebook’s search feature, which has been emphasized somewhat with the latest redesign, lets users search people, pages, groups, apps, events, posts by friends, posts by everyone, OR web results. Sterling makes the case that internal Facebook searches are different from web searches one would perform on Google, but in some ways, Facebook search simply goes places that Google doesn’t (while also going Places that Google does via the Bing-powered web search).

Facebook is almost like its own web in some ways, and that is becoming truer all the time as Facebook gets more of users’ time spent online (which it is doing through status updates, news, apps/games, videos, music, events, and possibly email in the future…we also suggest Facebook consider adding blogging to the mix).

Look at this newly released data from Nielsen about time spent online. In January (in the U.S.), Facebook users averaged 7 hours a month on the site. As a point of comparison, Google users spent about 2 hours.

In some ways, that doesn’t really take anything away from Google, because Google’s job as a search engine is to get you where you need to be to find what you’re looking for. However, Facebook users appear to be finding plenty of stuff they are looking for along with stuff they didn’t know they were looking for, as well as just hanging out and being entertained. With Facebook’s search feature, they’re able to find what they’re looking for without having to leave Facebook until the search result (at least theoretically).

Whether you think Facebook’s search growth is "phenomenal" or not, you can’t overlook the fact that more people are using the search feature, and some unknown percentage of that is pulling from Bing. Maybe this should be construed as a good reason not to overlook your Bing SEO efforts. Maybe it’s also another reason why Facebook should be viewed as one of Google’s key competitors (along with Microsoft, Yahoo, and increasingly Apple). Actually, Sterling points out that Google recently listed Facebook officially as a competitor for the first time in its annual 10K filing.

Google is seemingly going after the market that Facebook dominates with the launch of Google Buzz, but status updates are just part of the big picture. Search is just part of the big picture. It’s all about getting the user’s attention, is it not? Here are some tips for running a good Facebook page.

What do you think? Discuss here.

February 20, 2010
Bing Makes Inroads Against Google, Yahoo In January

A few teasing emails may be on their way from Redmond to Mountain View and Sunnyvale this morning. New comScore statistics shows that Bing managed to increase its share of the search market in January, while Google and Yahoo both lost ground.

Bing’s share hit 11.3 percent in January, up 0.6 percent from its December standing of 10.7 percent, according to comScore. That’s a reasonably significant gain, especially given Bing’s smallish starting point.

What’s more, 0.6 percent is the exact amount of share that Google and Yahoo lost between December and January, so Bing appears to be catching up to its larger rivals (as opposed to just beating up AOL and Ask).

Specifically, Google’s market share decreased from 65.7 percent to 65.4 percent. Yahoo’s share shrunk from 17.3 percent to 17.0 percent.

So again, cue the teasing emails. And maybe even plan for a reordered search hierarchy. If these exact rates of gains and losses persist for another seven months, Bing will pass Yahoo, putting Steve Ballmer’s search engine in second place and perhaps in a position to start making Google sweat a little.

Related Articles:

> Microsoft Exec Talks Bing Success/Profitability

> Bing Now Offering More Finance Information

> Bing Gets Localeze To Augment Local Biz Listings

February 10, 2010
Online Retail Spending Reaches $39 Billion In Q4
Online retail spending in the U.S. in the fourth quarter reached $39 billion, a 3 percent increase compared to a year ago, according to the latest report from comScore.

Total retail ecommerce spending reached $129.8 billion in 2009, slightly lower than the previous year’s total of $130.1 billion.

"The fourth quarter, with a 3 percent year-over-year growth, helped end what has been a disappointing year for online consumer spending on a more positive note," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

"As we head into 2010, there is reason for guarded optimism for online retail spending to continue to gain share of consumers’ wallets. At the same time, I expect absolute growth to be stymied by continued high unemployment and the deleveraging that is occurring in the economy as consumers exercise their new found propensity to save."

The largest online retailers, led by Amazon and Walmart, gained market share of ecommerce sales compared to small and medium-sized retailers.

Spending growth was driven by an increase in online buyers, while average spending per buyer saw modest declines.

Other highlights from the report include:
- Free shipping factored into more than 40 percent of e-commerce transactions during the holiday season.
- Tuesday, December 15 ranked as the heaviest U.S. online spending day in history at $913 million.
Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales
February 9, 2010
Android Market Share Growing By Leaps And Bounds

In many ways, the last traces of the 2009 holiday season have disappeared – you won’t find many decorations up, presents out, or leftovers refrigerated (we hope). comScore’s just released a report concerning the mobile market, though, and the stats are well worth examining.

comScore’s report covers the changes that occurred between September and December of last year. During that time, RIM stayed on top in terms of smartphone platforms, but it lost a little bit of ground. Apple, meanwhile, gained a similar amount, and so the gap between the two was effectively narrowed by a couple of percentage points.

Sadly (for them), Microsoft and Palm also wound up losers. Then – and this is arguably the most interesting part – Google made quite a leap.

Looked at one way, Google’s improvement of 2.7 percentage points is the biggest change comScore recorded during the September-to-December timeframe. Which is impressive enough. Yet looked at another, Google more than doubled its market share over the course of three months.

That’s quite a growth rate for Android. If it keeps up the pace for another three months, it’ll pass Palm by. And from there, it could be just a year or so away from catching up with Microsoft.

These statistics will definitely bear watching in the months ahead, even if they’re a little slow to be published.

Related Articles:

> Global Mobile Broadband Traffic Up 72%

> Motorola Making Another Direct-From-Google Phone

> Google Voice Makes Way To iPhone, Palm WebOS

February 8, 2010
Google Still Rules The Global Search Market

The U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google holds on to a commanding position in the global search market, according to a new study from comScore.

"The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president.

"Search is clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more knowledgeable ecosystem."

The total global search market had more than 131 billion searches conducted by people 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46 percent increase in the past year.

Broken down, it represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute. The U.S. is the largest individual search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or about 17 percent of searches conducted globally. China landed in the second spot with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia had the biggest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to 3.3 billion, followed by France (up61% to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53% to 3.8 billion).

Google sites were the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December, or 66.8 percent of the global search market. Google sites saw a 58 percent increase in search query volume over the past year. Yahoo sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches (up 13%), followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up 7%).

Microsoft sites saw the largest gains among the top five properties, growing 70 percent to 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its new search engine Bing. Russian search engine Yandex also saw solid gains, growing 91 percent to 1.9 billion searches.

Related Articles:

> Google Rolls Out Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

> Google Makes it Easier to Tell Where Results Originate From

> Get More Links in Your Actual Google Results

January 22, 2010
Shipping Sites See Surge In Traffic In December

Retail sites, shipping sites, and greeting cards sites all saw surges in traffic in December due to the holiday season, according to a new report from comScore.

"December proved to be a strong month for the retail category with Tuesday, Dec. 15 ranking as the heaviest online spending day of the year – and of all time – at $913 million," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

"Holiday seasonality also fueled visitation to Shipping sites, which continually see their highest volume of traffic during the month of December."

Not surprisingly, retails sites climbed in December as Americans search the Internet for holiday deals. The top gaining retail categories were jewelry/luxury goods/accessories, sports/outdoor, and flower/gifts /greeting sites, each growing more than 20 percent compared to November.

Jewelry/luxury goods/accessories sites attracted nearly 23 million visitors during the month, representing a 30 percent increase from November. eBags led the category with 2.9 million visitors (up 28 %), followed by Coach.com with 2.2 million visitors (up 26 percent), Zale Corporation with 2.1 million (up 48 %) and Kay Jewelers with 1.7 million (up 69 %).

Sports/outdoor sites grew to nearly 39 million visitors during the month, a 25 percent increase compared to November, led by eBay Sports with 5.1 million visitors (up 21%), trailed closely by Cabelas with 5 million visitors (up 26%). Dicks Sporting Goods followed with 4.6 million visitors (up 39%) and Sports Authority with 2.9 million visitors (up 29%).

Flowers/gifts/greetings sites saw a 23-percent gain, reaching nearly 39.8 million unique visitors in December. American Greetings led the category with 13.6 million visitors (up 18 %), followed by Gifts.com with 6.8 million (up 49 %), Hallmark with 5.6 million (up 46 %) and 1-800-Flowers.com with 2.9 million (up 48 %).

Traffic to shipping sites spiked in December as Americans rushed to ensure delivery of their gift purchases in time for the holidays. The category attracted 36.6 million visitors during the month, representing a 33-percent increase in traffic. UPS sites led the category with 19.7 million visitors (up 51 %), followed by USPS.com with 15.9 million (up 40 %) and FedEx with 12.6 million (up 36 %).

The e-card category grew 29 percent to 31.7 million visitors. The most visited site was Evite with nearly 8 million visitors (up 16%), followed by AG Interactive with 6.7 million (up 46%), MyFunCards with 5.7 million, and 123Greetings with 4.3 million (up 55%).

Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

January 21, 2010
Facebook’s 2009 Scorecard Shows Huge Gains

Simply put, Facebook had a terrific 2009. This afternoon, comScore provided some statistics that cover the entire year, and the easiest way to sum them up is by saying that double- or triple-digit growth occurred in an impressive eight out of ten categories.

According to comScore, the total number of unique visitors to Facebook increased 105 percent between December of 2008 and December of 2009, hitting 111.8 million before the new decade began. At the same time, the number of average daily visitors increased by an even greater amount: 181 percent.

Meanwhile, the total minutes and total pages viewed stats rose 198 and 151 percent, respectively. Average usage days per visitor hit 10.4 (up 37 percent), average minutes per visitor totaled 246.9 (up 45 percent), and average visits per visitor reached 27.4 (up 64 percent). And total visits increased 236 percent.

The only sort of weak metrics were the average minutes per visit measurement (down 11 percent, probably due to people visiting the site so often), and the average minutes per usage day tally (up just 6 percent).

So Facebook’s certainly starting 2010 in a much stronger position than it entered 2009. And looking at the tail end of the line in comScore’s graph, it doesn’t appear that the social network’s stats are going to plateau anytime soon.

Related Articles:

> Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats

> Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers

> More Reporters Using Facebook And Twitter For Story Research

January 21, 2010
comScore Joins Chorus Putting Google Up In Dec.

Nielsen, Hitwise, and comScore are all in agreement, so onlookers can perhaps declare it official now: Google had a good December. comScore, the member of the trio that most recently released its search market data, didn’t put Google up by a whole lot, though, and unlike the other firms, saw Bing gain ground.

Here are the facts related to that first situation: Between November and December, comScore believes that Google’s market share increased from 65.6 percent to 65.7 percent. Which would be fine, or even good, most months.

But both Nielsen and Hitwise thought Google did better in December (both in terms of month-over-month gains and overall market share), so that’s perhaps not the most positive news for the search giant.

As for Bing’s state of being, comScore stats indicate that the market share of Microsoft’s sites increased from 10.3 percent to 10.7 percent on a month-over-month basis. Nielsen and Hitwise had it under 10.0 percent and losing share.

Finally, since Google and Bing went up according to comScore, something had to come down, and comScore placed that burden on Yahoo, along with AOL and Ask. Yahoo’s share of the search market slipped from 17.5 percent to 17.3 percent.

Related Articles:

> Hitwise Puts Google Nearer To 75 Percent Market Share

> Google Makes More Search Gains

> "Google" Declared Word Of The Decade

January 15, 2010
Vevo Attracts 35 Million Visitors In December

Online music video service, Vevo, was the most visited U.S. website in the entertainment-music category in December with more than 35 million unique visitors, according to comScore.

Partners in Vevo include Universal Music Group, Sony Entertainment and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company. The site is powered by YouTube.

Vevo says its top ranking is an achievement because it did not launch until December 8 and it was not live for the full month of December, which comScore bases its results.

"The Vevo Network, which is still in its infancy, has debuted at the top of the comScore rankings for unique visitors across the Entertainment-Music category in the U.S.," said Rio Caraeff (President and CEO, Vevo).

"The interest and enthusiasm our users have shown has been both gratifying and inspiring. We are also proud to deliver such strong traffic results straight out of the gate to our content and marketing partners, which solidify their early belief in the Vevo vision. We listen very closely to all of our partners and fans, and have been incorporating their feedback to continue to improve upon the Vevo experience."

Music videos from Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Drake, Lady Gaga, Jay Sean, Shakira, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Young Money are the most popular on Vevo this week.

The Top 5 U.S. Entertainment-Music networks on the web, according to comScore Media Metrix data, for December 2009 include: MySpace Music, AOL Music, Warner Music and MTV Networks Music.

Related Articles:

> Vevo Reaches Content Agreement With EMI

> Vevo Gets Official Launch Date

> AT&T Strikes Ad Deal With Vevo

January 13, 2010
Online Holiday Spending Hits $29.1 Billion

Online holiday spending during 2009 reached $29.1 billion, representing a four percent increase over the same period last year, according to a new report from comScore.

"The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year of marginally negative growth," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

"Among the highlights of the season was the first $900 million online spending day and a strong late season spending surge, propelled by effective retailer promotions, guaranteed shipping and a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard that convinced many to shop from the comfort of home."

Tuesday, December 15 was the heaviest online spending day of the year and of all time, at $913 million, one of nine individual spending days to surpass $800 million during the 2009 holiday season.

Cyber Monday ranked as the second heaviest spending day of the season, the highest it has ever ranked, with $887 million in spending. The third heaviest spending day of the year was Tuesday, December 1, with $886 million in spending, followed by Wednesday, December 16 with $874 million and Monday December 14 with $854 million.

Jewelry & watches rank as the top performing online retail category for the holiday season growing 20 percent over 2008. Consumer electronics ranked second with 15 percent sales growth, driven by strong sales of flat panel TVs, mobile devices and e-readers. Other categories performing well included event tickets (up 8%), computer hardware (up 7%) and books & magazine (up 6%).

Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

January 6, 2010
Google Increases Lead In Online Video

There may come a point at which Google’s popularity maxes out, but we haven’t reached it yet. A new report from comScore concerning online video sites indicates that the search giant’s properties attracted considerably more eyeballs in November than the previous month.

In October, comScore counted 126.3 million unique viewers in connection with Google’s sites. In November, this number increased to 129.0 million. Meanwhile, Google’s share of videos viewed rose from 37.7 percent to 39.4 percent.

This didn’t bode well for second-place Hulu in one respect, as the site’s share slipped from 3.1 percent to 3.0 percent. Still, Hulu drew in about 1.3 million more unique visitors on a month-over-month basis, and comScore stated, "The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property."

As for the rest of the videos viewed rankings, Viacom Digital came in third place, a significant move up from its former position in fifth. Microsoft placed fourth, and Yahoo followed it in fifth. Then came Fox Interactive Media, the Turner Network, the Tremor Media Video Network, CBS Interactive, and AOL.

Finally, here’s a bit of news about the overall state of things: in November, comScore saw the number of videos viewed online from the U.S. go beyond 30 billion for the first time ever.

Related Articles:

> Hulu CEO Shares 2009 Stats

> Hulu Falls Short In Comparison To Blockbusters

> YouTube Now Has A URL Shortener

January 5, 2010