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December 8, 2015Mobile-first, mobile-foremost Smartphones to be 50% of online con [...]
ReportsSmartphones will deliver half of all time spent online in 2016, and online time on smartphones will grow a further 50% by 2020. They are increasingly replacing the TV’s role as the primary provider of video content. There are stark differences in habits by age: young people’s smartphone use is highly substitutional for other media. Older people, who will account for most of the growth in time online, will add it on top of the time they already spend with other media, particularly TV. The implications of an increasingly mobile-only world are wide-ranging: social discovery and the mobile form factor change what works in content, while in-feed, branded content, payments and subscription are attractive alternatives to display and search advertising on mobile.
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December 1, 2015UK Digital Upfronts 2015: going mobile
ReportsThis year marked the second annual IABUK Digital Upfronts. As well as Facebook, Google/YouTube, Aol, Yahoo!, Twitter, BuzzFeed, Vice and others, several traditional media companies – Sky, The Guardian and Global Radio – participated, reflecting the rising importance of digital media and digital media buyers to their businesses. Many of the pitches were informed by the key shifts in online content: it is increasingly cross platform, driven by mobile devices and focused on video programming, and these formed the main themes of the event. A key piece of context is the rise of social media and the shift to programmatic buying, which continue to driven down pricing for all but the most valuable inventory – audience scale, high value audiences and premium content have never been more essential.
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November 9, 2015
Apple’s iPhone advantage
ReportsApple’s results underlined its status as the tech industry’s biggest and most profitable company due to the iPhone, accounting for two thirds of the company’s revenue and capturing three quarters of all smartphone profits. While the iPhone dominates the $500+ handset market, the question is how will this segment develop as smartphone penetration approaches maturity in developed markets and mobile operators restructure handset subsidies. The shift to separate airtime and device plans could increase consumer price sensitivity, but leasing plans with annual replacement, supported by the iPhone’s strong second hand value, bring the opportunity of faster replacement cycles, with upside and downside risks matched.
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October 30, 2015
FLASH – Telstra Summit 2015 No going back now
ReportsWe attended the Telstra Digital Summit and came away with the following key takeaways: 1) we finally have a Government that will promote technology as an enabler; 2) can the Internet of Things replace the mobile as our primary computing device? 3) technology companies will disrupt telcos; 4) mobile is driving the disruption in customer experience; and 5) the pace of disruption is accelerating.
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October 29, 2015
UK consumer perspective on Internet of Things
ReportsThe UK is a prime market for sales to consumers of IoT products with obvious and compelling use cases: wearables surf perennial social trends such as fitness and diet, while smart home solutions address energy use, safety and security. British Gas’ Active Hive Heating, first to market and the top smart thermostat brand in the UK, is facing competition from the Nest Learning Thermostat from Nest Labs, while Samsung’s SmartThings provides safety and security in the home. A substantial barrier to sales of IoT products to consumers lies in their concerns regarding the privacy and security of the personal data collected online. This data should be safe under the UK’s data protection regime, although well-publicised hacks highlight compliance issues on the part of data controllers.
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October 8, 2015
Friends with benefits: Facebook and publishers
ReportsWe are seeing a proliferation of news distribution services on social media and technology platforms, as companies like Apple and Facebook look to capture the value of longform professional content. Facebook’s Instant articles will likely be the most significant distribution mechanism for publishers, allowing Facebook to further position itself as a provider of quality, rather than just user-generated, content. This is best seen as a trade: news providers’ engaging content for Facebook’s audience reach and data. While concerns about reliance on Facebook and content commoditisation are understandable, these are the inevitable results of user behaviour.
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October 5, 2015
Amazon’s Prime Directive
ReportsDespite dropping the Fire Phone, Amazon has upped the ante in its battle for digital media consumers, upgrading its Fire TV devices and rolling out a new range of low price and robust tablets, starting from £50/$50, squarely aimed at the mass market. As with all Amazon devices aside from the failed phone, they are conduits for the company’s media and retail services, aimed at increasing purchases and forcing other platform operators to include them. Although shrinking as a share of Amazon’s business, media remains crucial, both for direct revenue and to attract customers to Prime, its membership programme, which by some estimates now accounts for the majority of its US sales.
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September 3, 2015
UK quarterly internet trends Q2 2015
ReportsThe UK’s love affair with the smartphone continued in Q2: 85% of adults under 55 and a third of over-55s now have smartphones, which are becoming the primary method of accessing the internet, accounting for over 40% of time online. Among teens and younger adults internet usage is now higher than TV viewing, though this is still offset overall by the massed ranks of older viewers who remain glued to their TV sets. Commercial revenues derived from mobile devices still trail their share of internet usage but the gap is closing fast: in Q2, smartphones and tablets generated nearly half of consumer e-commerce transactions, while mobile ads represented 34% of internet search and display advertising.
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August 27, 2015
UK internet device and consumption forecasts: Smartphones rule
ReportsThe UK is now a smartphone society: by the end of this year smartphone users will exceed the PC internet audience and by 2020 we project penetration will reach 83%. The average smartphone user now spends an hour and three quarters a day online, significantly more than the equivalent for PC and tablet, and phones already account for nearly half of all time online. We are positive on tablet user numbers, and think PCs will be resilient, especially for work users. All in all we expect connected time in 2020 to be 21 billion hours higher than in 2015, up over 35%. Commercial revenues via smartphones and tablets still lag their share of internet usage, but the monetisation gap versus the PC is closing fast: the newer devices accounted for 27% of internet search and display advertising last year, up 8ppts versus 2013, and 36% of e-commerce transactions, up from a quarter a year earlier. Consumers are already thinking mobile-first; businesses will have to follow.
July 24, 2015Apple Q3 2015: Watch this space
ReportsApple delivered strong results in Q3 2015, selling a record number of iPhones for the June quarter, though iPad sales slid dramatically as consumers switch to ‘phablets’ and the company did not provide any detail on early sales of Watch, its biggest product launch since 2010. We remain bullish both on the iPhone and the Watch’s long term potential, though the latter remains a work in progress and, like many of Apple’s existing customers, we await the next iteration with interest; by contrast the iPad may have peaked already. Rising revenue from App Store, up 24% year-on-year, as well as new products like Apple Music and Apple Pay, should continue to boost the contribution from Services, and we expect this to evolve into a more material part of the business, but ultimately it’s still all about the iPhone.
July 24, 2015East meets West: Nikkei picks up the FT
ReportsA cash offer of £844m from the giant Japanese financial information business Nikkei, a sometime partner of the FT, was too attractive to pass up for Pearson, whatever strategic reservations it felt about offloading the title or doing so now. The deal does not include Pearson’s coveted 50% stake in the Economist (or the FT’s London headquarters), so represents a considerable premium, of 35x earnings and 3x revenues by our estimates. Increased competition in the premium financial information market suggests the FT was a good consolidation opportunity. For Nikkei the move develops its opportunities in Europe and the US.
July 6, 2015Content marketing: publishers’ saviour?
ReportsBrands are investing more than £5.2 billion a year in content strategies, £1.2 billion of it with consumer media, and investment is growing at 25% per annum, massively outstripping growth in traditional advertising. Content marketing defies the broader direction of travel in the digital era – response-measured programmatic advertising – by expressing value in content and context, much of it at the top of the discovery funnel. In a rapidly converging marketing value chain some consumer publishers are adopting agency values and practices by responding to the changing demands and expectations of their advertisers.
June 16, 2015Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet
ReportsWe have synthesised the key themes from the latest Internet Trends Report from Mary Meeker at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. We don’t purport this to be our own ideas, but provide it as an interesting resource (see below for Australian ramifications). Three key trends are evident to us from the report: the shift to mobile, the shift to a service economy and finally that disruption of traditional industries is likely to continue for some time yet.
June 11, 2015Amazon Prime and the video market
ReportsDVDs are a core Amazon product, of which it is one of the largest retailers – the challenge is to sustain this position throughout the on-going transition to digital formats. Amazon Prime Instant Video’s first purpose is to help the transition by building Amazon’s digital video retail ecosystem. As part of the loss leader Prime bundle it also supports increased customer retail expenditure and stickiness. Despite strong headline growth in Prime membership and some high profile content, the streaming service has yet to generate significant consumer interest. Prime’s net cost is likely to rise as Amazon must finance content to meet rising consumer expectation while suffering competitive price pressures on the bundle.
June 5, 2015UK quarterly internet trends Q1 2015
ReportsThe latest numbers for Q1 2015 show strong device and internet user growth, with more of the population online than ever before, including more than 90% of under-55s. Growth amongst older groups, however, has slowed to a crawl. Participation in online activities is up across the board, but digital media data shows spend on ebooks and digital music struggling, with the latter being heavily impacted by the rise of unlimited streaming models such as Spotify. The story of mobile's surge continues, with almost a half of e-commerce transactions and a third of search and display ad spend now going to mobile. Most of these mobile devices are Android, but iPhone seems to have gained long term share with its larger phones. Google services, however, have cross-platform reach.
April 27, 2015Media & Telecoms: 2015 & Beyond slides
ReportsEnders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 17 March 2015. The event featured talks from 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides the accompanying slides for some of the presentations.
April 27, 2015Media & Telecoms: 2015 & Beyond
ReportsEnders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 17 March 2015. The event featured talks from 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides edited transcripts from some of the talks, and you will find accompanying slides for many of the presentations here. Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.
April 16, 2015Local media: new structures emerging
ReportsLocal newspaper circulation continues to decline precipitously, while decline in some categories of print advertising has slowed marginally. Digital traffic exploded in 2014, however, substantially outperforming the market generally, resulting in signs of stabilisation across print and digital in some marketing categories, notably recruitment and pockets of display. Industry leaders have moved beyond cost-cutting and are no longer reproducing their print products online: local platform solutions, and strategic technology and business partnerships, mean fundamentally different companies are emerging in local media.
March 16, 2015Apple Watch: the next must-have device?
ReportsApple has provided more details on its smartwatch range, on sale from April, priced between $350-$17,000 to appeal to a wide range of would-be buyers and initially focusing on enhancing the iPhone through added convenience. The Watch is likely to develop quickly in the next few years, and has the potential to become an indispensable tool for managing payments, health data and identity, as well as controlling other connected devices. The company is laying the foundations for Watch to become a must-have device, but the case is still to be made and ultimately its success depends on a number of key groups and factors outside Apple’s control.
March 10, 2015YouTube and its MCNs: growth and variety
ReportsYouTube remains the dominant online video site globally, although competition for the viewer is growing from OTT video and other popular apps. Reach and consumption appear to be slowing in the US and the UK, but YouTube reports strong growth in global watch time as smartphone adoption proceeds. The number and variety of Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs) on YouTube continues to grow. Music video MCN Vevo has so far been the largest single presence on YouTube, but it is being overtaken by the combined Disney/Maker Studios MCN. In contrast to the aggregator MCNs with tens of thousands of channels, studio MCNs have much smaller network sizes and a higher share of owned channels. Their focus on content curation and creation has allowed some to build global audiences of repeat viewers, a unique strength and of significant appeal for advertisers.February 16, 2015New phase for news brands
ReportsNews has entered a new phase, defined by the disruptive forces of mobile, social media and video, effecting rapid changes in consumption and the underlying economics for news businesses: the level of change and innovation is rewiring the structure and financial models for news more quickly than many news providers are able to respond. While charging for news looks to be a successful route for some brands, we note that the scale of charging for the industry is substantially smaller than in print. Apart from this, three models are gathering traction: selling audience engagement; selling news services; and selling news to businesses. Each of these options involves very different strategies and opposing objectives which can only be pursued at the same time by those with the deepest pockets. Everyone else has to choose.
February 9, 2015Bigger than ever: Apple’s Q1 2015 results
ReportsThe iPhone 6 and 6 Plus drove Apple’s most extraordinary quarter ever, with the company’s position in the smartphone market improving on all fronts: explosive growth in China, rising market share in the US and a rising average sales price. By contrast, iPad sales continued to decline in spite of the iPad Air 2’s release, suffering from cannibalisation by the phablet-sized 6 Plus and saturation in developed markets. Apple has a strategy to revive sales, which may bear fruit later in the year. A slate of new products is coming this year, led in the spring by Apple Watch. The question is, will Watch be a significant new source of profit or just a way to protect the iPhone’s dominant position in the smartphone market.
February 3, 2015Digital UK 2015
ReportsThis Digital UK 2015 report is a collaborative effort by research partners Enders Analysis and EY. Encapsulating materials in the public domain and proprietary to the partners, it sets out to demonstrate the vibrancy of the UK’s digital economy and its potential for growth. Key UK strengths include: Rapid expansion of Next Generation Access (NGA) network coverage and 98% population coverage of 4G by the end of 2015 thanks to private and public investment. 45 million adult consumers on fixed line broadband and 45 million forecast to be using mobile broadband by 2020, thanks to the embrace of smartphones and tablets. Business e-commerce sales to consumers and other businesses of £556 billion in 2013, or 20% of non-financial business turnover, on a par with the US. The UK’s world-class digital infrastructure and its vast pool of smart connected consumers are unique strengths, and could be converted to leadership on the digital business models of the future. However, as important as the tech industry is to the future of the UK, the UK’s many existing businesses in other sectors could also aspire to be ‘fit for the digital age’. This will not only drive value for UK businesses, but if pursued energetically, it will help resolve the UK’s productivity puzzle.
