Title: My Digital Life A review of what we know about UK digital consumers
1My Digital LifeA review of what we know about UK
digital consumers
The UK Association of Online Publishers
(AOP) www.ukaop.org.uk
2Agenda
- Who are we and why are we here?
- The importance of research for AOP and our
members - Making sense of whats out there
- Drawing out some important trends
- What were going to do with it
3Who are we and why are we here
- The UK Association of Online Publishers is a
cross-sector body representing digital content
publishers in the UK, regardless of media heritage
4 5AOP - Mission
Who are we and why are we here
-
- To help media owners build successful, creative
digital businesses, through research, events and
group representation
6The importance of research for AOP and our members
- Technology and changing consumer behaviour have
meant publishers need to rethink their business
models
push ? pull linear ? on-demand fixed ?
mobile text and images ? video one way ? dialogue
What are people actually doing? Whats
mainstream, and how much is hype? How will
tomorrows consumer want to consume quality,
branded content?
7Agenda
- Who are we and why are we here?
- The importance of research for AOP and our
members - Making sense of whats out there
- Drawing out some important trends
- What were going to do with it
8Making sense of whats out there
- Overall objective
- To investigate the role and value of digital
content in the lives of consumers and de-mystify
consumer behaviour - Methodology
- AOP Futures group commissioned an overview of
digital consumers in the UK - 10 days desk research based on publicly available
information and market research - Focus on consumers behaviour
- exhausting but far from exhaustive!
9Availability penetration of digital services
Proportion of households
Source Ofcom Communications Market 2006 Note
Figures for Radio and mobile are for individuals
not households
10Take up of household audio visual devices
Source Ofcom Communications Market 2006
11Trends weekly communications consumption
- Total volume of TV viewing has remained broadly
constant, but strong shift to digital - 18m digital sets in Q1 2006
- Digital only channels accounted for 30 of
viewing in 2005 - Radio listening has declined and is shifting to
digital channels - 11 of radio listening is now via DAB, DTV and
internet - Mobile usage continues to increase
- Internet usage has increased significantly
Source Ofcom, Operators, RAJAR, BARB, TGI-BMRB
Note TV and Radio hours are per individual,
Calls and texts are per connection, weekly
internet hours are forQ4 each year among adults
aged 15 who have used the internet in the last
12 months
12Younger adults - very different patterns
Much more focused on newer and often mobile
entertainment devices Consume far less TV and
overall reach is declining Radio reach has
declined significantly over the past 5
years Significantly higher use of mobile and
internet
Source Ofcom, Operators, RAJAR, BARB, TGI-BMRB
Note TV and Radio hours are per individual,
Calls and texts are per connection, weekly
internet hours are forQ4 each years among adults
aged 15 who have used the internet in the last
12 months
13Reduced consumption resulting from increased
internet use
Since using the internet for the first time,
which if any of the following activities do you
think you undertake less?
Percentage of respondents()
Source Ofcom Research April 2006
14Younger users are more reliant on internet and
entertainment devices
Source Ofcom Communications Market 2006
15 and their mobiles
Weekly use
Source Ofcom Communications Market 2006
16And less interested in TV
Weekly TV reach
Source BARB Note 15 minute consecutive reach
17 and radio
Weekly radio reach
Source Ofcom Communications Market 2006
18Making sense of whats out there
- Trends in internet usage indicate
- Strong growth over the past decade (60 of homes
now online, 70 broadband) - Internet users - younger and richer than the
average - Particularly high usage in London and the
South-East - Most often access from home and using a PC /
laptop - other access devices are also more
widely used - gt 50 of users go online every day average
weekly use around 11 hours (12 for broadband and
5 for dial up) - Online users are undertaking an increasing number
of activities online - Email, shopping, banking, information search,
downloading music / video, listening to radio,
watching TV / movies / videos - Music / audio more widely used than video but all
are growing - Search engines are still the most commonly used
tool for finding information on the web - Google remains the king of search and much more
the no.1 internet brand in the UK in terms of
visitors / reach
19Agenda
- Who are we and why are we here?
- The importance of research for AOP and our
members - Making sense of whats out there
- Drawing out some important trends
- What were going to do with it
20Drawing out some important trends
- Some common themes or mega-trends
- Participation
- On-demand
- Mobility
- Personalisation
21Participation
- Internet has become a 2-way medium
- Primarily led by younger users
- Some of the current forms of participation
include - Blogging
- Sites that are purely user generated
- Social networking
- Gaming
22How often do you write comments on a website or
blog?
Percentage of those who write comments
Source Ofcom ad-hoc survey, June 2006
23Reason for owning a webpage or weblog
Percentage of users with webpage / weblog
Source Ofcom ad-hoc survey, June 2006
24UGC the poster kids
25Gaming
- Niche activity but heavily used by committed
gamers - World of Warcraft has 7.5m subscribers worldwide
playing around 20 hours each per week - New types of interactive environments
- Second Life (750k residents and growing)
- Interactivity and participation are enabling
development of pure online entertainment - Potential for spin offs back to traditional media
26Drawing out some important trends
- Some common themes or mega-trends
- Participation
- On-demand
- Mobility
- Personalisation
27On-demand
- Content and the number of distribution channels
are growing and this has fuelled the trend
towards content when and how I want it - Some examples of on-demand functionality
- PVRs local storage and time shifting
- Video on demand
- Streaming online
- Downloading
- Podcasting
28Downloading of music legal and illegal is
commonplace
Millions of single tracks
Source BPI / OCC Note Excludes album downloads
29Podcasting
- Still in early stages but growing in momentum
- Podcast Alley hosts more than 25k podcasts with
more than 1m episodes - 12 of US online users downloaded a podcast in
Nov 06, up from 7 earlier in the year, but only
1 report regular use1 - Forrester reports that around 25 of users claim
to be interested in using podcasts - but 73 have never heard of it and have no
interest in it - In Europe2 around 2 of users claim to use
podcasts - Tend to be younger, male, technically savvy and
heavy internet users - Already heavy users of audio streaming and music
downloading
Sources 1 Pew Internet American Life
Project 2 Forrester The European Podcast
Consumer
30Drawing out some important trends
- Some common themes or mega-trends
- Participation
- On-demand
- Mobility
- Personalisation
31Mobility
- Mobile phones are ubiquitous
- Around 80 of UK individuals have a mobile
- Almost 40 of UK households have an MP3 player
with iPod leading in terms of market share - Portable / mobile devices offer increasing
functionality and features - Growth of WiFi and Wimax offer significant
potential for mobile devices
32Portable devices offer a range of valued features
Consumers valuing benefits / features of portable
devices as important
Source Ofcom, Consumer Engagement with Digital
Communications services Note Those respondents
scoring benefit / feature as 4 or 5 on a five
point scale
33TV over mobile
- Launch in 2005/06 of TV over mobile
- Vodafone offers Sky by Mobile
- 3 offer ITV live as well as programme clips
on-demand from a range of broadcasters - Orange TV offer programmes on demand from Channel
4, CNN and others - Only 4 of internet mobile users claim to have
ever watched TV over their mobile - Less than 1 in 5 pay for the service
- Of those not paying there is very little interest
in paying
34Drawing out some important trends
- Some common themes or mega-trends
- Participation
- On-demand
- Mobility
- Personalisation
35Personalisation
- Ability to self-schedule
- TV / Radio how consumers want it rather than
broadcasters schedule it - Consumption based on personal recommendations
- Personalisation / Aggregation
- Increasing opportunities to customise published
content - MyYahoo! etc.
- Personalised online spaces including RSS feeds,
links, photos, videos, music etc. (e.g. in
MySpace)
36Agenda
- Who are we and why are we here?
- The importance of research for AOP and our
members - Making sense of whats out there
- Drawing out some important trends
- What were going to do with it
37Issues remain for online content producers
- Consumers are still consuming but in different
ways with potentially different business models - Importance of well defined brands and content
offers - Ensuring users can find the content they want
- Distributed content how to capture the value?
38So what next?
- Qualitative research with savvy digital
consumers - Definition of savvy will be key
- Methodology
- - Combination of methods including monitored
online blogs and in-home observations -
39So what next?
- Quantitative research
- Topics to be informed by qualitative research
- Online panel methodology
- Series of topics explored with wider population
40Contacts
- Alex White, director
- Alex.white_at_ukaop.org.uk
- Liz Somerville, project manager
- email liz.somerville_at_ukaop.org.uk