Your stats roundup includes news about influencer budgets, consumer complaints, email spam, and lots more to boot.

Check out the Internet Statistics Database for further stats and insight.

Decline in the average amount of time spent using the internet per day

Hootsuite and We Are Social’s ‘Digital in 2019’ publication reports that there has been a decrease in the amount of time people are spending on the internet per day (via any device).

A Global Web Index survey of internet users aged 16 to 64 found that the average amount of time spent using the web per day is now six hours and 42 minutes. This is a 1.7% decrease year-on-year, down from six hours and forty-nine minutes in January 2018.

Elsewhere, however, time using the internet on mobile has increased, rising from three hours and six minutes in January 2018 to three hours and fourteen minutes this year.

internet usage

UK marketers using influencers are allocating 40% of budget to influencer campaigns

A new global study from Rakuten Marketing has revealed that the proportion of marketing budget being allocated to influencer campaigns (by marketers working with influencers) has nearly doubled over the past two years, reaching 40% in 2019.

The research, which involved 3,500 consumers and 900 influencer marketers (200 in the UK sample), uncovered the fact that in the UK, marketers are setting aside in excess of £800,000 per year for influencer campaigns. However, it also found that marketers are investing this budget differently to previous years.

In 2017, UK marketers working on influencer campaigns stated they were happy to pay Facebook celebrity influencers up to and in excess of £75,000 for a single post mentioning their brand. In 2019, however, this has fallen by almost £50,000 to just £25,000 per post. Instead, marketers are investing more in micro-influencers, stating that they would pay nearly £26,000 for a marketing campaign from a micro-influencer.

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Complaints about data and privacy dominated 2018

According to the DM Commission’s Annual Report, issues relating to data, privacy, and accuracy were the biggest concerns for consumers in 2018.

In the year that GDPR came into force, the DM Commission reported a marked reduction in complaints against businesses in the direct marketing sector – from over 200 in 2017 to just over 100 in 2018.

The Commission did however investigate 27 cases involving a breach of the DMA Code, 83% of which related to data, privacy and quality (up from 69% last year). The remaining complaints were split between customer service and contractual issues. 

46% of UK consumers say Netflix is now their first choice to watch a film for the first time

A new study by GlobalWebIndex highlights how audiences have evolved in recent years, with 46% of UK consumers now citing Netflix as now their first choice when looking to watch a film for the first time. Cinema is only marginally ahead, cited by 48% of consumers.

Meanwhile, the study also found that Netflix is playing an increasing role in determining what audiences watch. Coco, which won Best Animated Feature at last year’s Oscars generated international viewership of 38% thanks to its appearance on Netflix – 10% more viewers than The Shape of Water, which won Best Picture of the Year.

Netflix

Email spam decreased by 5% in 2018

New research from Return Path, which is based on the analysis of 6.9 billon commercial emails, has revealed that overall spam placement decreased by 5% (reversing the upward trend of the past two years).

Meanwhile, it appears email subscribers took a more active role in managing their inboxes in 2018 compared to 2017. For example, read rate increased slightly from 22% to 24%, while spam complaints more than doubled from 0.17% to 0.39%, and the “deleted without reading” rate jumped from 12% to 16%.

Amongst the industries with the lowest spam rates were banking & finance, with a rate of 4%. In contrast, the education/nonprofit/government sector scored highly, with a spam rate of 19%.

Email Best Practice Guide

10% of companies regard themselves as ‘very advanced’ at CX

Econsultancy’s Digital Trends report, published in association with Adobe, has found that the companies delivering first-class, personalised customer experiences are outperforming their competition.

In a global survey of 12,815 professionals, the organisations that classify themselves as ‘very advanced’ at customer experience were found to be almost three times more likely than their peers to have exceeded their top 2018 business goal by a significant margin.

Despite this, however, only 10% of companies surveyed regard themselves as very advanced at CX, and the same percentage describe themselves as ‘digital-first’. Digital-first companies are 64% more likely than their peers to have exceeded their top 2018 business goal.

Finally, it was revealed that CX leaders are four-and-a-half times more likely than other companies to have a highly integrated, cloud-based technology stack.

digital trends stat

That’s your lot for this week. Thanks for reading!