How the World Uses the Web:

The Conversational Media category, which includes social networks and blogs, continues to be a high-reach, high-growth category, attracting 3 out of 4 web users and growing at a rate of 7.1%. Increased adoption of broadband and the availability of content contribute to high growth in the Games and Entertainment categories as well. Portals, Search and Services—including email and IM— continue to be the most common entry point to the Web, while mainstream content sites maintain mid-reach and flat growth. The challenging economic climate is reflected in a steep decline in visitation to Retail, Automotive, Banking and Travel sites.

Social Networking:

Facebook’s global traffic has increased by 127% over the past year. Even with its growing popularity, there are still major differences in preferred social networks throughout the globe. Language considerations help drive clustered usage, particularly in countries such as China, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Russia, where user preference for the local language is strongest.

Mobile usage of social networking sites is growing rapidly.

Almost 12% of the U.S. mobile population, or 27.1 million people,accessed social networking sites in January 2009. This is almost a twofold increase (197%) over the previous year. Among this group, frequent users are the fastest-growing audience, quadrupling (427%) versus a year ago.

Multimedia & Video:

In November 2008, 146 million Americans viewed 12.7 billion online videos. Online video viewing now accounts for 12.5% of Americans’ total time spent on the Internet, up from 8.5% in November 2007. YouTube, with 40% market share in November 2008, continues to be a significant driver in the U.S. online video market, accounting for
approximately two-thirds of the growth in online video views during the past year. The site generated 5.1 billion U.S. video views during the month, representing a 74% increase versus year ago. Hulu, the joint video venture of NBC Universal and News Corp, stormed onto the scene in 2008, and has grown its audience by 139% in the last six months. The site’s success reflects a developing trend in online video—a move from short-form, user-generated content to long-form, professionally-created content, including full-length movies and TV shows.

Search:

Search query growth was driven largely by an increase in searches per searcher, which rose 16% from the previous year, while the number of unique searchers grew 6%. Google sites, which generated 85 billion searches in 2008, accounted for nearly 90%
of the total growth in search query volume during the year. Google also remains the worldwide leader in search, accounting for 62% of global search activity. Google is clearly the primary search provider in South America and Europe but commands far less share in Asia and Russia, where local providers—such as Naver (South Korea), Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia)—dominate their markets.

Advertising Effectiveness:

Data from comScore’s advertising effectiveness norms database shows that display advertising—despite a lack of clicks—can have a significant, positive impact on consumer behavior, including: visitation to an advertiser’s website (lift of at least 46% over a four week period), usage of brand name search (lift of at least 38% over a four week period), likelihood of buying the advertised brand online (an average 27% lift in online sales), and likelihood of buying at the advertiser’s retail store (an average lift of 17% in in-store sales).

ther measurement methods that rely on cookies don’t provide the answer. comScore research has found that 30% of users delete their cookies in a month, deleting an average of 4.7 times.

Display Ad Views:

U.S. Internet users viewed a total of 4.5 trillion display ads (including both static and rich media, but not video) during the past twelve months, with the average person viewing more than 2,000 ads per month. Despite the staggering total volume of display ad views, the number declined somewhat during 2008.

Phone Service Providers Are Top Advertisers

In November 2008, AT&T was the top online advertiser, with 6.6 billion ad views, while Sprint Nextel (3.3 billion), Vonage (2.6 billion) and Verizon (2.6 billion) also made the top-ten list.

Extended Web & Distributed Content:

Top Ten Global Distributed Content Publishers (Among Participating Publishers), January 2009; Growth in Reach of Clearspring Technologies, a Top Extended Web Platform (Among Participating Platforms)

The market for distributed content—widgets, gadgets, and applications—has grown 34% since September 2008, and now comprises half of the global Internet audience.

Slide, Inc., a publisher of widgets and applications for social networking sites, had a worldwide reach of 13.8% in January 2009. ShareThis, the #2 widget publisher included in comScore’s extended web reporting, was the fastest growing, with a 49% increase in unique visitors since September 2008.

Among extended web platforms, Clearspring Technologies is emerging as a clear leader, reaching 43% of all web users worldwide, a 63% increase in reach over the past five months.

Consumer Spending:

According to periodic consumer surveys conducted by comScore, the top economic issue for all income groups in January 2008 was unemployment, with 46% of all respondents saying that it is the economic condition of most concern to them.

2008 saw a dramatic increase in people conducting financial and economic-related searches on the Web.

The number of people searching on terms related to unemployment and bankruptcy more than doubled throughout 2008.

E-Commerce:

Travel e-commerce spending grew 9% in 2008 versus year ago, to $84.3 billion, while retail e-commerce spending (non-travel) grew only 6% to $130.1 billion. Following several years of high growth rates hovering at 20% and higher, 2008 marked the softest year for retail e-commerce growth since comScore began tracking e-commerce
sales in 2001.

Online spending growth rates peaked in April 2008 at 15% and then steadily declined through the remainder of the year. The important holiday shopping months of November and December both saw negative growth rates of -3%. In early 2009, however, online spending recovered slightly, with sales in January 2009 increasing 2% versus
year ago.

Video Games, Consoles & Accessories was the fastest-growing retail category in 2008, while the Software, Music, Movies & Video category declined as more consumers chose to stream and download instead of purchasing CDs and DVDs.

The fastest-growing retail category in 2008 was Video Games, Consoles & Accessories (up 29% versus 2007), which continued to benefit from online sales of popular game consoles like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3.

Other fast-growing categories included Home, Garden & Furniture (up 25%) and Sport & Fitness (up 25%). Collectively these growth categories suggest a growing cocooning dynamic among U.S. consumers as they spend more time at home.

The Computer Software and Music, Movies & Video categories continue to see large declines in online purchasing, as more content becomes increasingly available via free and paid download.

Mobile Internet Usage:

From November 2007 to November 2008, the number of people using their mobile phone to browse for news, information and entertainment increased by 52% in the U.S. and by 42% in the five largest European markets—United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy. The browser is not the only way people on-the-go stay connected.

While the audience using download able applications to access news, information, and entertainment is less than half the size of the browsing audience, in both the U.S. and Europe this group has nearly doubled in size in the past year driven in large measure by the iPhone. As more application stores come online in 2009, this is a key sector to watch. The growth in mobile browsing and application use is driving another trend in mobile: advertising-supported business models.

GSMA Mobile Media Metrics Feasibility Study

Google is the #1 off-portal destination, while Facebook reigns as the leading mobile site in terms of time spent browsing. Mobile users accessing Facebook spend an average of 24 minutes per day on the site, similar to the 27.5 minutes spent by PC users. These mobile user findings were gleaned from the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics program feasibility study—with comScore as its measurement partner. The program delivers real, anonymized and aggregated mobile audience data for rich planning information for the media and advertising industries. The U.K. operator task force comprises Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile International and 3.

All data and graphs are taken from comScore, Inc. and  copyright protected by comScore, Inc.