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Have you ever heard of Mary Meeker? She’s known as the ‘queen of the internet,’ and her annual report on internet trends is one of the most anticipated.
The metaphorical crown she wears on her head is certainly well-deserved: Meeker first caught attention in 1995 when, in her first report, she predicted that the future lay in ‘navigating through information services.’ In 2009, she was the first to recognize that internet usage would shift from desktop to mobile and she invested in high-profile startups like Spotify, Square, and Waze.
The former financial analyst is thus one of the most authoritative voices in the communication industry, and every year her numerous slides (this year, 333!) examine changes in Internet user behavior, platform responses, and growth opportunities.
Here, we’ve grouped some of the most interesting points about the current and future state of the market.
A Few Numbers
51% of the world’s population has internet access: that’s 3.8 billion people, a two-point increase from 2017. Much of the new digital population comes from Asia (about 51%), but the entire system is still influenced by global social and economic inequalities: North America covers 9% of the market, yet it has an internet coverage of 89%, while in Africa, that same figure is stuck at 32%.
However, growth is slowing down, and a slight halt was already noticed in 2018 due to the fact that so many people are already online, making it challenging to find new users. For a similar reason, smartphone sales are also declining.
The prevalence of using smartphones to access the internet is confirmed: mobile not only surpasses desktop usage but for the first time, it overtakes television in terms of usage time.
An interesting point highlighted is the increasing concern about time spent online. The fear is not unwarranted: Americans spend at least 6.3 hours a day connected (according to Hootsuite’s report, Italians are not far behind, averaging 6 hours spent online daily).
A Visual and Interactive Web
Images are becoming more and more the medium through which users communicate, a trend influenced by technological improvements such as smartphones equipped with almost professional cameras and faster connections.
As evidence, Twitter, a medium that originated as text-based, today features over 50% visual content in its impressions.
This trend certainly favors platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, which guide users in choosing and discovering new products through shared images. Therefore, it’s no coincidence that in the fashion industry, Visual Search is gaining importance for creating new outfits and content for users.
Similarly, video formats are gaining importance to quickly convey essential concepts.
“Video killed the radio star,” sang The Buggles, but they were wrong: alongside videos, there’s a resurgence of audio communication thanks to podcasts and virtual digital assistants. Over 70 million monthly podcast listeners in the United States alone, and the installation of tools like Amazon Echo doubled in just a year.
Thus, the importance of crafting and studying visual and audio content as communication pillars is confirmed: don’t underestimate the power of images and don’t leave this aspect to chance!
The Challenge of Advertising
Small and large entrepreneurs are increasingly using the web to get noticed and are experimenting with more precise means to make this strategy fruitful.
Meeker’s report confirms that advertising spending on the internet has seen a 22% acceleration: a large part of the purchases are made through Google and Facebook, which are now making room on the podium for companies like Amazon and Twitter.
Unfortunately, this growth is accompanied by new obstacles to overcome. The space for advertising is becoming more crowded, and it’s predicted that the costs of acquiring new customers will continue to rise, sometimes far exceeding the revenue they bring in.
This challenge is closely related to another data point in the report: the increased focus on privacy by users and companies following past scandals. 87% of internet traffic is encrypted, and acquiring data is becoming increasingly difficult.
For this reason, Meeker suggests considering a Freemium approach: offering basic functionality for free while providing the option to activate a premium (paid) account to fully utilize the platform. This strategy is already employed by many big players in various industries.
Examples from these brands are always exciting but can sometimes be less applicable to smaller-sized companies. How to overcome this obstacle? If our goal is greater visibility, we can’t rely solely on ad sponsorships because, beyond the advertising market saturation, a single action won’t lead us to our objective.
It’s essential to move with a holistic vision, a multi-channel strategy with upstream objectives, different intermediate goals to achieve, and a list of tactics to try and iterate.
In Conclusion
The web is becoming more complex and growing so rapidly that it’s outpacing the adaptation of companies, employees, regulatory authorities, and even governments.
Consider the difficulty of containing problematic content (fake news, supremacist propaganda videos, etc.) that can now spread at the speed of light thanks to the internet, or managing new forms of violence such as cyberbullying or revenge porn, even legislatively.
So, how can a small to medium-sized company emerge in this turbulent sea? The effort is intense but not impossible: if change is the only constant reality, we must be responsive and move with a mindset of constant learning and experimentation.
For the same reason, even our team at Antartika dedicates a considerable part of time to education to bring in new ideas and skills.
Be ready to learn, iterate, and change.
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