Ofcom released it’s annual “Communication Marketplace” report to a blaze of PR fanfare, sound/word bites and a cocked-up Digital IQ test.
The yearly release of this tome sums up much of what is wrong with corporate understanding of digital channels and human behaviour.
It ends up being, at best, an exercise in stating the obvious and at the other end of spectrum it’s a guide into has-been trends and some rather statements about web use. But it’s impressively fat, 429 pages top be exact. Ok, I’m being slightly unfair, the Internet bit is about 50 pages and there are some gems in there.
- Mobile advertising revenue has doubled every year since 2009
- Digital advertising as a whole is growing at 20%, but still dominated by Google Adwords
- Hard media (CD, DVD, books etc) is starting to lose ground to digital media (downloads and streaming), especially amongst the under 25s
- Ignoring Youtube, video streaming has now reached about a third of the population. Music streaming is half that.
- Laptop usage has pretty much peaked, whilst mobile and tablet is growing at 10% year-on-year. Desktops usage fell by a sixth.
What does this mean?
It’s a retrospective report into the communications marketplace so won’t include the new and snazzy such as wearables, internet connected things or web-site technologies but there is lies the problem for corporates. If you’re planning you 2015 Internet Strategy and you base it on this report, by 2016 you’ll be 3 years behind the curve.
So regard the report as a fantastically in-depth look at how the Internet was in late 2012 and you’ll be okay.
By Martin Dower
