Measuring Australia’s digital pulse
By Wayde Bull, Planning Director at Principals.
Few business leaders today would challenge the idea that the internet is a priority communications channel for their business, yet it’s surprisingly hard to build up a rich picture of Australian’s online behaviours and attitudes from public domain information. Many of the facts published – and even more of what is forecast – emanate from markets far, far away.
So how deeply are Australians interacting with the web? Through what devices? What tasks and applications are their favourites? And to what extent are brands permeating into their online routine? These questions are being tackled in a new quarterly study by Principals, based upon a nationally representative sample of 300 internet users per wave.
As a result of the online research method employed, the study hones in on the 71% of Australians, by World Bank estimates, who embrace life online. But what is immediately obvious is just how deeply Australian users have fallen for the medium, across the social spectrum. Principals estimate that the average Australian internet user aged 14 plus spends 21 hours per week connected to the internet.
Across every age group, from teens to retirees, the internet easily outstrips television as the medium that they would find the most difficult to live without. While it’s not surprising that 9 in 10 online teenagers view the web as indispensible, so do 8 in 10 web users aged 55 or more. The notion of the internet being a province of the young no longer holds. In fact, the internet’s immense popularity across all ages frames it as the most important brand-building medium bar none, given its broadcast-like reach today.
While TV remains the nation’s firm second favourite across all ages, it’s sobering for television executives to learn that just over half of online teenagers view TV as indispensible. This can in part be explained by teen’s enthusiasm for catch-up TV, with four in ten having watched TV shows on a computer in the past month. Seven in ten teens have also accessed video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, further shattering conventional definitions of ‘tube watching’. TV is being disaggregated into bite sized portions, with the advertising largely removed.
One bright note for advertisers is younger Australian’s appetite for watching branded films and commercials over the internet, often passed on by friends. 4 in 10 web users aged less than 25 have viewed a branded film or commercial online in the past month, underlining the critical importance for brand owners to develop creative ideas entertaining enough to provoke conversation and sharing between peers. In every sense of the word, advertising needs to become remarkable in a pass-it-on world.
While mobile internet devices are rapidly gaining popularity, it’s desktop-based machines that remain the predominant web access point. The almost universal web experience for Australians is the home-based desktop, with 8 in 10 adults accessing web content in this way each month. The glowing box in the corner no longer has an aerial attached, it has a keyboard and mouse.
Around one in three internet users have accessed the web via a mobile phone or tablet device in the past month. Just over a third of these liberated users have accessed the web via an Apple branded device. Nokia hold about a third of the mobile access market, with the remainder spread amongst a disparate array of manufacturers; Google’s Android platform is yet to make its presence felt here.
Mobile web users differ most markedly from deskbound users in two important respects; their enthusiastic embrace of micro-apps, particularly those that harness the in-built widgetry in their devices and their greater propensity to post content on community sites from their phones. It is claimed that UK iPhone users spend 50% of their screen time accessing Facebook; an embroynic trend in this direction is suggested here.
One of the more overblown trends, in Australia at least, is Twitter. While one in four online users access Twitter monthly, only one in four of these followers ever write tweets; it’s an activity that has many more passive observers than it has active participants.
For years clients have witnessed the dwindling effectiveness of banner ads, to the point today where just 10% of online users claim to have clicked through to an ad message in the past month. Thankfully, there are a wide array of other branded activities that attract people’s active participation. 51% have received and read brand-focused emails in the past month, 44% have proactively researched a brand online, 29% have actively requested information from a company online, 19% have participated in an online brand competition, 16% have read a brand-focused blog and 15% have friended a brand.
While the days of producing a single 60 second tv commercial and roadblocking the three major networks on a Sunday night is a dim and distant memory, there are a multitude of new ways in which consumers are willing and open to engage with brands. But it’s clear that a multi-faceted digitally-based strategy is needed to build bonds with customers who have such eclectic preferences for connecting with brands. A large aggregate audience for your message can still be built but it demands a belief in building bonds one small tribe at a time.
Wayde Bull is Planning Director of the brand consultancy Principals.
First published on AFR (www.afr.com) - 19th August 2010
