We know that many of you are hungry for data to help you keep up with current media industry trends and prepare for changes that are just around the corner. To help you do just that, we compile excerpts from some of the key stories covering issues affecting the publishing and media industries each month.
This month’s selections cover a range of topics, including ebooks, advertising, mobile apps, push messaging, phablets, and more.
More Americans Now Reading Ebooks, New Pew Data Show (Digital Book World)
- Some 28% of Americans read an ebook last year, up from 23% in 2012.
- Even those who read ebooks also read print books: only 4% of readers are “ebook only,” according to the data.
- Overall, reading by Americans hasn’t changed in the past few years, with about three out of four having read at least one book, and the “typical” American having read five.
- According to the latest data from the Association of American publishers, which surveys over 1,000 U.S. publishers on their overall sales figures every month, ebook sales were up 2.2% in 2013 over 2012.
- More Americans are reading ebooks on their cell phones, with 32% of ebook readers saying they do so, up from 28% a year ago.
Mobile Advertising Projected to Increase 64% in 2014 (Mashable)
- Companies nearly tripled the amount of money spent on mobile advertising, from $1.2 billion in 2012 to $3 billion in 2013, according to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
- Roughly 65% of both ad agencies and marketers plan to invest in native advertising, for an estimated total of $4.3 billion, in 2014.
- At least 17% of the time people spend on their mobile devices is on a social network. It’s no wonder then that analysts predict mobile and social advertising will increase 64% and 47%, respectively.
- Marketers are expected to spend nearly $47.6 billion on online ads alone in 2014, with $13.1 billion of that figure allocated for mobile ads.
Study Says Users Spend 40% More Time Reading Content Within Apps Than on Websites (Press release)
MAZ, whose publishing platform powers over 600 apps on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore, unveiled a study that shows that users are spending an average of 40% more time reading content within apps than on websites.- One of the key findings indicates that users of entertainment content apps spend an average of 38 minutes in each issue. That was 15 minutes longer than sports, and was more than triple the amount of time spent in business content apps.
- When reading entertainment content, users are much likelier to re-engage with an app, returning for multiple sessions to view a single magazine issue.
Four iPad Stats Every Publisher Should Know (Ad Age)
- Email is by far the most-used channel to share content on iPads. Of all shares on the Onswipe platform in 2013, 54.5% occurred through email, with 28.7% and 13.5% occurring on Facebook and Twitter, respectively.
- Google refers 2.6 times more iPad visitors than Facebook does.
- The busiest hour on the iPad is 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time. The most “thoughtful” hour on the iPad is midnight to 1 a.m. Eastern time, where readers spend over seven minutes on average with content, the longest of any hour during the day.
- Men’s lifestyle content is the iPad’s most engaging, with iPad owners spending 5 minutes and 43 seconds on site when visiting that type of content, the longest time among 16 categories Onswipe measured. Also performing well was business/finance, which saw 5 minutes 8 seconds time on site.
World Magazine Trends 2013/14 Report Shows Online Ad Upsurge (The Huffington Post)
- According to FIPP’s World Magazine Trends 2013/14, “The prediction is that Internet advertising will increase its share of the ad market from 18.4% in 2012 to 24.6% in 2015 and that Internet advertising overtakes newspapers for the first time in 2013, exceeding the combined total of newspaper and magazine advertising in 2015.”
- The 444-page survey said print editions of newspapers and magazines would continue to shrink at an average rate of 2%-3% a year, based on figures from the ZenithOptimedia agency.
- PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which also contributed to the book, noted that digital revenue had seen considerable growth, from about $8.2 billion (8% share) in 2012 to an expected $15.2 billion (15% share) in 2015.
- While the growth is pegged at 11%-13% a year, the problems are that online readers are worth less to advertisers than print readers since publishers have to compete for display revenues with every other website, it said, adding that real-time buying practices were eroding prices of premium content.
- The fastest-growing Internet channel seems to be mobile, which by 2015 is set to more than double in size to $33 billion, or a quarter of all Internet advertising expenditure, ZenithOptimedia concluded.
Online Content Videos Hit Record 52 Billion Monthly Views (Search Engine Watch)
- Online content video views have exceeded 50 billion a month for the first time on record, and video ad views have tripled in the past year, according to the latest data from the comScore Video Metrix service.
- In December 2013, 188.2 million Americans watched 52.4 billion online content videos, while the number of video ad views totaled 35.2 billion that month.
- Google sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in December, with 159.1 million unique viewers. Facebook ranked second, with 79.1 million viewers, followed by AOL with 76.2 million, Yahoo sites with 53.5 million, and NDN with 49.4 million.
- Americans viewed nearly 35.2 billion video ads in December 2013, with AOL maintaining the top position, with 4.3 billion ad impressions.
- By comparison, Americans viewed 11.3 billion video ads in December 2012, with Google sites ranking first with nearly 2 billion ads.
- Time spent watching video ads totaled 13.2 billion minutes in December 2013, with AOL delivering the highest duration of video ads at nearly 1.9 billion minutes. Video ads reached 55.6 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 204 times during the month.
More Developers Targeting Android Tablets for New Apps Than iPad (TabTimes)
- A just-released developer survey by Evans Data finds it takes less time to develop apps for Android than iOS and that more developers are targeting Android for tablet apps than Apple’s iPad.
- The results showed that 41% of developers targeting Android said their typical app is finished in one month or less compared to 36% for iOS and 34% for Windows Phone.
- As for tablets specifically, the survey found that 84% of those targeting tablets are working on Android versus 62% targeting iOS and 52% targeting Windows.
- However, the survey also confirms that most developers develop for multiple platforms and screen sizes.
Two-Thirds of Kids Now Reading Digitally, New Study Shows (Digital Book World)
- According to a new study from children’s entertainment research and consulting group PlayCollective and Digital Book World, 67% of U.S. children aged two-to-thirteen are now reading ebooks. That’s up from 54%, the number recorded in a similar study from last year.
- Some 92% of the kids who do read ebooks read them at least once a week, with many of them reading ebooks every day.
Push Messaging Almost Doubles User Retention Rate (MediaPost)
- According to a new study by Urban Airship, all apps retain users opted-in to push messaging at nearly double the rate of those opted-out.
- The opt-in users are much more engaged, with 26% more average monthly app opens per user.
- Due to greater retention of opt-in users, the vast majority of an app’s total opens over time will be from users that receive push notifications.
- Media and sports apps had the first and second highest long-term retention rates and highest average opt-in rates respectively, but the lowest average engagement lifts across industries.
- The data suggests a missed opportunity to drive more app opens by deep-linking pushes to related in-app content that offers additional perspectives and deeper information, suggests the report.
Study: Phablets Will Grow Sixfold by 2018 (Media Life Magazine)
- Juniper Research predicts that the number of phablets — essentially a phone with a display of 5.6 inches or bigger — will increase from 20 million last year to 120 million four years from now.
- South Korea and China are especially enthusiastic adopters of the devices, with South Koreans preferring the format for gaming and China enjoying the content streaming benefits.
- Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows systems will power most of these devices, though they will be challenged if Apple decides to get into the bigger-screen business. The iPhone’s screen is still much smaller.
2013 a Growth Year for Magazine Media Across Platforms (MPA)
- An exclusive analysis conducted by MPA, using Kantar Media’s PIB data for magazine ad pages and their tablet edition ad unit data base, shows a 5% increase in the magazine media advertising “footprint” of print pages and tablet units.
- For the full year 2013, tablet magazine advertising units increased 16% with print pages essentially flat at -0.2%.
- A look at all PIB-measured magazines for print versions only reveals print ad revenue of $19.7 billion dollars, a 1% increase for 2013 over 2012.
- Print ad pages were slightly down (-4%) for the full year, however, it is important to note that this is an improvement over 2012 YTD, which showed an 8% decline in ad pages and ad revenue loss of 3% versus the prior year.
Media Metrics is a new monthly feature from Technology for Publishing, aimed at keeping you armed with the latest industry data. If you’d like to share something you’ve read, drop us a note. And keep up with the latest industry news coverage by signing up for our This Week in Publishing emails or our monthly Publishing Trends newsletter.
Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini
