comScore on 2008 and 2009
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On Monday, comScore released its “The comScore 2008 Digital Year in Review” report, which highlighted important online marketing trends in the U.S. and gave some general expectations for 2009.
Here are some highlights from the report.
E-commerce
- Total e-commerce spending in the U.S. increased 7 percent in 2008 to $214.4 billion compared to the prior year.
- Travel e-commerce spending grew 9 percent to $84.3 billion, while retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending grew 6 percent to $130.1 billion.
- 2008 showed the weakest growth for retail e-commerce spending since comScore began following it in 2001.
- April was the strongest month in 2008 with 15 percent growth, while November and December both saw declines of 3 percent each.
- Video Games, Consoles & Accessories was the fastest growing retail category, increasing 29 percent year-over-year, thanks to the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Home, Garden & Furniture (25 percent) and Sport & Fitness (25 percent) also saw strong growth.
- Music, Movies & Video saw a 23 percent decline, while Computer Software (excl. PC Games) declined 18 percent.
Top gaining site categories
- Job Search was the top gaining site category in 2008, as its audience grew 51 percent to nearly 19 million visitors in December. CareerBuilder.com was the leader here with 9.1 million visitors, a boost of 78 percent.
- Women and Coupons also saw big growth (46 percent), while Politics (43 percent) and Gay/Lesbian (41 percent) also realized increases.
Top properties
- The total Internet population in the U.S. grew 4 percent to 190.7 million visitors in December 2008.
- Google Sites topped the list, overtaking Yahoo! in April. Google’s audience grew 12 percent to 149 million visitors. Yahoo! Sites finished second, followed by Microsoft Sites, AOL LLC and Fox Interactive Media.
- eBay was the only top 10 property to see a decline in its audience in 2008.
Top-gaining properties
- Break Media led the way with growth of 279 percent, thanks mostly to traffic acquisitions and business partnerships.
- Glam Media grew 144 percent, due to similar reasons listed for Break Media.
- Facebook.com grew 57 percent, while The Mozilla Organization grew 40 percent.
Core search
- Almost 137 billion queries were conducted at the five major U.S. core search engines in 2008, a 21 percent year-over-year increase.
- Google Sites (85 billion searches) was responsible for nearly 90 percent of the total growth in search volume in 2008.
- Google finished first, followed by Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask Network and AOL LLC Network.
Online display advertising
- Internet users in the U.S. saw 4.5 trillion display ads in 2008. The average user saw 2,000 display ads in a month.
- Display ads have declined during 2008.
- AT&T was the top online display advertiser with 6.6 billion views, followed by Microsoft Sites with 4.1 billion views and Apollo Group Inc. with 3.8 billion views.
- Yahoo! Sites was the top publisher for display ads, serving 37.1 billion of them in 2008, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 34.9 billion and AOL LLC with 18.2 billion.
Online video
- As of November 2008, there were 146 million unique viewers, a 6 percent increase from November 2007.
- As of November 2008, 12.7 billion videos were viewed, a 34 percent increase from the same month during the previous year.
- The average viewer watched 86.8 videos in November, a 27 percent increase from the year-ago period.
Mobile
- “By any measure, 2008 was the year of the smartphone,” according to comScore’s report.
- The number of smartphone subscribers in the U.S. nearly doubled in 2008, while the number of 3G subscribers grew 43 percent.
- Mobile browsing grew 34 percent.
Looking ahead to 2009
- Advertisers will have more opportunities to reach those who view TV and movie content online, as the activity becomes more mainstream.
- Major advertisers are re-evaluating their ad spending because of the recession. Publishers need to emphasize view-through’s impact on ROI to get fair value for their ad inventories.
- Publishers and advertisers need to start thinking about how to use and monetize distributed content.
- 2009 will be another record year for the mobile Internet, making it a more viable marketing channel for advertisers and marketers.
- Cost benefits will help online retail spending during the weak economy.
