Understand your customer

If the time spent on the Internet for personal computers was distilled into an hour then 27 percent of it would be spent on social networking and forums across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. In the U.S., 16 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and five minutes shopping. Global comparison In the UK, 13 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and six minutes shopping. Australian Internet users spend 14 minutes on social sites, nine on entertainment and four minutes shopping online. Across all three markets, time spent shopping online grew year-over-year, but the UK market emerged as having the most prolific online shoppers, spending proportionally more time on retail Websites than online users in the U.S. or Australia. British Internet users spent 10 percent of all time online shopping in 2012, compared to nine percent in the U.S. and six percent in Australia. This was in part due to a bumper winter holiday season in the UK where 370 million hours were spent shopping online, 24 percent higher than the monthly average. Consumption of news content also increased across all three markets with Australian users emerging as the most voracious consumers of news online. Six percent of all time spent online in Australia in 2012 was on a news Website, compared to five percent in the UK and four percent in the U.S. Meanwhile, the time spent on social media proportionate to other online activities declined across all three regions. The U.S., which has been the most dominant market for social media consumption in the last three years dropped from 30 percent of all time spent online to 27 percent. In Australia time spent on social dropped from 27 percent to 24 percent while in the UK it dipped from 25 percent to 22 percent year-over-year. This highlights the rise in access via 3G and 4G networks as consumers spend increasingly more time online while on the move. "Understanding consumer behavior across channels is more important than ever as more visits are being made on the move, particularly among social networking and email,” says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services. "With smartphones and tablets becoming more powerful, our data clearly indicates the difference between mobile and traditional desktop usage further enabling the ‘always on’ consumer mentality. Marketers need to understand these differences, as well as regionally, to ensure campaigns can be tailored for better and more effective engagement.” Mobile browsing When looking at the U.S. browsing data for mobile devices, email accounted for the largest time spent on average, for the same categories for Q1 2013. Email made up 23 percent of time spent on mobile devices for Q1-13, while social networking accounted for 15 percent. Entertainment had the third highest time spent with 13 percent, followed by shopping with 11 percent and travel with 9 percent. The mobile data does not include app usage, but does include mobile browsing within an app. Read more of the latest consumer trends in The 2013 Digital Marketer Report Learn more about consumer online behavior by visiting our Online Trends page Learn more about the author, Matt Tatham

The generation of 18- to 34-year-olds known as millennials is an increasingly influential group that impacts many aspects of the American lifestyle, including fashion, technology, entertainment and beyond.

What marketers need in order to lay the groundwork for success in their online advertising campaigns.

In 2013 and beyond, marketers will have to work even harder to gain and maintain position in organic search results. They’ll also need to spend more effectively on paid search ads by knowing how their target customers use search, and by applying insight into their behaviors and attitudes to plan and execute better content and campaigns. Here’s an excerpt on the search landscape from the upcoming 2013 Digital Marketer Report: Five Websites captured 20 percent of all search activity in Q4 2012, while the top 500 captured nearly 50 percent. Expansion to the top 1,000 Websites reached nearly 75 percent, highlighting the challenges for marketers to reach potential customers through search, even for those with a large Web presence. Top five Websites to capture search clicks Websites Domain Q4 2012 - share of search clicks Facebook www.facebook.com 8.48% YouTube www.youtube.com 5.55% Yahoo! www.yahoo.com 2.63% Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org 2.01% Amazon.com www.amazon.com 1.40% Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Even through paid search, the landscape changes very little — the top 10 Websites captured 16 percent of all paid search clicks, and the top 500 captured 56 percent. Top five Websites to capture paid search clicks Websites Domain Q4 2012 - share of paid search clicks Amazon www.amazon.com 4.19% eBay www.ebay.com 3.46% eHow www.ehow.com 2.44% BestBuy www.bestbuy.com 1.06% Yahoo! Shopping shopping.yahoo.com .85% Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Source: Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise Breaking through the clutter is key to reaching customers who are in the market for your product and services. Understanding who your ideal customers are can help to focus your search campaigns on these consumers and see greater campaign effectiveness. For more digital consumer insights, pre-order The 2013 Digital Marketer Report today.

With so many New Year resolutions about losing weight, many Americans have turned to the Internet to help. See what diets they’re searching for.

With the busy holiday marketing season in full swing, Experian Marketing Services has released its online retail round-up for the week ending Dec. 22.

With the busy holiday marketing season in full swing, Experian Marketing Services has released its online retail round-up for the week ending Dec. 8.

Twenty years ago this week, the first mobile text message, or SMS, was sent by British engineer Neil Papworth. Today, Americans are texting more than ever and among young adults, many of whom were not yet born when the first message was sent, texting is almost as common a mobile activity as talking. And why wouldn’t it be? According to the latest Simmons National Consumer Study, 48% of adults ages 18-to-24 say that a conversation via text message is just as meaningful as a telephone call. A similar share of adults ages 25-to-34 feel the same way. Regardless of age, texting is still, technically, the second most common activity that Americans engage in on their cell phone after talking. During a typical week, 95% of mobile adults talk on their mobile phone, while 59% text. Among adults ages 18-to-24, however, 89% talk on their phone and 85% text. Despite the increasing availability of mobile chat or instant message applications, texting remains the dominant means for exchanging short messages. Only 8% of all mobile adults use their phone to IM or chat. The fastest thumbs To get a more in-depth understanding of the texting habits of adults today, we leveraged data from the Simmons Connect mobile panel of 1,485 U.S. smartphone owners. Hands down, young adults text more than any age other age group. During a typical month, in fact, smartphone-owners ages 18-to-24 send 2,022 mobile text messages and receive another 1,831 for a combined total of 3,852 texts sent and received. With every age bracket we move up, the number of mobile texts drops by roughly 40%. For instance, smartphone owners ages 25-to-34 send, on average, 1,110 text messages a month and receive another 1,130 for a combined total of 2,240 messages. We are also able to leverage the Simmons Connect smartphone panel to understand mobile calling behaviors. The data shows that while young adults hold the record for the most text messages sent and received, they actually make and receive few calls, by comparison. During a typical month, smartphone owners ages 18-to-24 make 119 calls on their mobile phone and answer another 64 calls. Adults ages 35-to-44 make and receive the most calls on their mobile phones in a given month. (Call counts do not include inbound and outbound calls that go unanswered.) Text around the clock Unlike television and radio, which have peak hours for reaching consumers, mobile text messages reach Americans throughout the day, providing advertisers with a medium to connect with consumers any time they want or need. No surprise, young adults are the most likely to send and receive mobile text messages throughout the day. The smartphone panel data shows that during every hour between 8:00 A.M. and midnight, more than half of young smartphone owners are both sending and receiving mobile text messages. Even when most of us are asleep, young adults’ smartphones continue buzzing from inbound texts. In fact, 37% of 18-to-24 year-old smartphone owners receive texts at 4:00 in the morning. By comparison, just 20% of smartphone-owners ages 25-to-34 years-old receive texts at this late (or early) hour as do 17% of those 35-to-44, 15% of those 45-to-54 and 10% of those ages 55 and older. Better to send or to receive? During overnight hours, the share of young smartphone owners who send texts surpasses the share who receives them. However, by 8:00 A.M., the difference between those two figures narrows to the point that they are nearly equal. In fact, from noon until 11:00 P.M., young adults are more likely to send mobile text messages than they are to receive them. Call or text? While texting is still a secondary use of mobile phones after calling, that’s not the case all day, especially among young adults. In fact, while smartphone owners ages 18-to-24 are more likely to make an outbound call than they are to send a text from their phone between 7:00 A.M. and 10:00 P.M., they are more likely to send a text between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M., during hours when they might understandably wake the recipient. That should help us all sleep a little better.

Black Friday online traffic increased 7% in 2012 versus 2011 as the top 500 retail sites received more than 193.8 million total US visits. So far this Holiday week of online traffic to the top retail sites is up 10% on average. Online retail traffic was up 1% on Black Friday compared to Thanksgiving Day 2012 traffic this year. Amazon.com remained the top visited retail site on Black Friday while Walmart was the second most visited retail site. BestBuy moved up to the 3rd most visited site while Target was the 4th most visited site. JC Penney moved up from being the 8th most visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day to the 5th most visited on Black Friday. Among the top 5 sites, JC Penney saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 26%. Looking at the top 20 retail sites on Black Friday, the Apple Store site saw the biggest day-over-day growth at 99%. Check back for CyberMonday insight and a weekly recap of this week. Learn more about the author, Matt Tatham