Every year, Mary Meeker (a well-known venture capitalist in the internet world) releases a report with a whole slew of insights into how we use the world wide web. If you’re really interested in the web, go ahead and page through all of the 2018 report.
It’s long, though (294 slides), so we took a look through it and pulled out some highlights. Here’s what you should know!
We’re spending more time online.
This one probably doesn’t come as a surprise: The amount of time people spend on digital media is growing. Adults in the United States spent an average of 5.9 hours on digital media in 2017, which is up from 5.6 hours in 2016. That doesn’t sound like much of an increase, but it follows the overall trend of increased usage over time, which you can see easily in this graph. Plus, look at that continued increase in mobile usage!
Online messaging is growing by leaps and bounds.
As the overall number of people using the internet rises, so does the use of online messaging apps. For business, this means that more of the people you want to be communicating with are on these apps. How can your customers or clients and potential ones easily and conveniently reach you? This graph shows the growth in specific apps for messaging. Notice how Twitter is quickly getting left behind by the others!
Voice search and the technology to match it are booming.
If you follow our blog or other industry blogs, you’ve probably noticed that people are talking about voice search. So, it’s not surprising to see huge growth for it in Meeker’s report. Not only are we using voice search more often, but we’re adopting new technology to take advantage of it. Just look at these graphs specifically about the Amazon Echo. Not only have a huge number of people purchased one in the past year, but the technology has also gotten a heck of a lot smarter.
We’re making more of our purchases online.
In 2017, 13% of all purchases in the United States were made online. That’s a 16% growth over 2016, which is an even bigger growth than we saw from 2015 to 2016 at 14%. Clearly, U.S. consumers are getting more comfortable with making purchases online and are less likely to hop in their cars and head over to the brick and mortar store location.
Two search behemoths dominate product research.
Chances are, if you’re in need of some product research, you’ll either open Amazon or Google (or another search engine). These are the two main starting places for people looking to find a product. In fact, they dominate with 85% of product finders starting on one of the two. Also, you might be surprised to see how far Amazon has surpassed search engines in this space!
We really like subscribing to stuff.
Just about everywhere you go, you’ll see offers for subscriptions. Subscribe to read, subscribe to read, subscribe to listen, subscribe to a monthly box of great stuff….it’s everywhere. And clearly, it works! Just look at the growth of these subscription services.
We watch videos on our phones.
This doesn’t really come as a surprise, right? We like to watch videos, and increasingly, we’re doing it on our phones.
We understand the importance of reaching an audience online, so our ad spend is growing.
Every year, more companies jump on the ad spend bandwagon. It’s such an effective way to reach the audience in the right place at the right time, so naturally, it’s growing.
We want personalized results, so Google gave them to us.
You’ve been hearing for years now about the use of more phrases being used in search such as “near me” and “how do I” and “should I”. As people get more conversational with their search phrases, Google keeps up with implementing new personalized elements into search results. Just look at the astronomical growth of the use of the term “near me”. It’s nuts!
There you have it – some of the most compelling and important slides from Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends report.
Need help strategizing about how to take advantage of these trends? Let’s chat.
