Digital Times » Surveys

Devises left smarting in iPhone’s wake

Edward — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:22:44 +0000

A blog that we frequnetly visit, the excellent freakonomics hosted on the New York Times website, alerted us to another feather in the bow for iPhone users. They are having more sex than those who use a Blackberry or phones run using Android. The analysis was carried out by OKCupid, an online dating site in the US. As you can see on the graph above it is all good news for the iPhone users amongst us. The sample size is 9,785 and the age spread is comprehensive.

As you might expect the survey was picked up by a number of news agencies, including networks in America and beyond. We are just suckers for a little smut it seems.

Rise in number of jobs posted on Irish sites ‘encouraging’

Stephen — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:50:53 +0000

The number of jobs being posted on Irish jobs sites has risen significantly. The Irishjobs.ie jobs index, which measures jobs advertised across Ireland’s five leading online recruitment firms, has released results for Q2 2010. The new index reveals an 11% increase in jobs advertised online, since the last set of figures were issued in March 2010. The index also reveals that figures from Q2 surpassed the benchmarked index from April 2009 by 19%, reflecting positively on the employment sector.
The sectors with the biggest increase in jobs advertised online in Q2 (as compared to Q1) are Secretarial and Administration (+47%), IT (+23%) and Banking Financial Services and Insurance (+20%).
Jane Lorigan, managing director of Saongroup.com Ireland, the parent company of IrishJobs.ie said, “It is encouraging to see, as we did in the last quarter, that there is yet again an increase in the number of jobs being advertised online. In regards to the IT and Sales sectors, there is still a strong demand for employees with almost twice as many jobs advertised in these industries than any other.”
Other sectors which have seen significant increases include Education, Childcare and Training (11%), Sales (+11%), Marketing (+8%), General Management (+8) and Science, Pharmaceuticals and Food (+8%).
Overall the sectors with the most number of jobs advertised online are IT, Sales, Customer Service, Call Centres and Languages, Hotel and Catering and Banking, Financial Services and Insurance.
On the flip side, as consumers continue to watch their spending and tighten their belts; the Retailing, Wholesaling & Purchasing sector is experiencing the greatest decline (-11%) in jobs advertised online when compared to Q1 figures.

First IAB Ireland report says online ad spend worth nearly €100 million

Stephen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:10:08 +0000

The first IAB Ireland online ad spend study has been published. Online ad spend in Ireland was €97.2 million in 2009. The report was put together by IAB and PwC with a view to establishing how much Irish advertisers spent online in 2009.
The report suggests digital ad spend in Ireland is now 10% of the total ad spend (the total Irish 2009 ad spend suggested by PwC was €940 million). This means digital advertising is now worth more than outdoor, consumer magazines, and cinema.
“Online’s strong performance in this, our benchmark study, provides great confidence for the future growth of our medium,” says Suzanne McElligott, chief executive IAB Ireland (pictured).
As a bench mark study, the report only looks at three key digital media formats: search (which accounts for 46.2%), classified (27.2%) and display (26.6%).
“We estimate that our study accounts for 90% of online ad spend,” says McElligott, “At least 90% if not 95%,” confirmed Bartley O’Connor, consultant with PwC (pictured left).
29 of Ireland’s leading online publishers participated in the study, including – Boards.ie, Donedeal.ie, entertainment.ie, Google, Independent Digital, Microsoft Advertising, MyHome.ie, The Irish Times, Ticketmaster Ireland, eircom, Daft Media, RTE, TCH, Ireland.com, and Yahoo!
Sales houses and ad networks also participated and all data was provided to PwC on a confidential basis. Google did not reveal its earnings from Irish advertisers. Instead PwC, “created an independent estimate of Google’s revenue from Irish advertisers, by extrapolating from spend data provided directly by a representative sample of Google clients”.
As search accounts for 46% of online ad spend one may assume that the bulk of this (say 40%) is spent with Google. Therefore, it is a fair estimate to suggest approximately €38 million is spent by Irish advertisers with Google each year.
75% of the study’s participants predict growth or strong growth for online ad spend in 2010.

Europe’s online ad market continues to grow in recession

Stephen — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:30:12 +0000

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe has just released its annual advertising spend survey for the year ending December 2009. The research covers 23 markets ranging from the mature markets of the Nordics and Western Europe to the emerging markets in Eastern and Southern Europe. Russia, Bulgaria, Switzerland and Slovakia are included in the report for the first time. The growth of the European online ad market has slowed to 4.5% but online’s total share of the ad market nears 20%.
Whilst last year’s online advertising growth rate of 4.5% shows a significant slow down compared to previous reported increases of 20% in 2008 and 40% in 2007, digital was the only advertising format to experience any increase last year. Internet advertising spending continued to grow in almost all of the 23 markets measured and had a combined value of €14.7bn. The US market totaled €16.3bn for the same period.
Search continued to grow, posting a 10.8% increase on a like-for-like basis, although this was down from 26% growth the previous year. Display advertising was flat (+0.3%) and was down in most mature markets: France -6%, UK -5% and Sweden -5%.
Accounting for 76% of the European online ad market in 2009, the big six markets experienced single digit growth: UK +4.6% France +1.7%, Germany +5.2%, Netherlands +1.9%, Spain +7.7% and Italy +6.5%. Growth rates were higher in Italy and Spain where online advertising started from a lower base.
Alain Heureux, President and CEO of IAB Europe said, “In the first recession of the digital advertising era, we have been impressed with the resilience shown by the countries in the IAB Europe network. We are at a crossroads for the online advertising market; we have a booming search market supporting traffic and sales and lead generation, and online display is ripe for further growth due in part to the success of video and social media.”

Online TV viewers will accept more ads

Digital Times — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:39:36 +0000

New research from comScore suggests online TV viewers are willing to watch more ads, nearly twice as many in fact. “While some analysts have suggested that the shift to online video reflects a consumer desire to view fewer ads, our research suggests that in many cases online TV viewers actually have a higher tolerance for advertising messages than they are currently receiving,” said Tania Yuki, comScore director of online video.
1,800 U.S. Web users were quizzed as part of the research and the results show that approx. seven minutes of ads per hour is acceptable to the majority of viewers. Currently about four minutes per hour is the standard served by online players and advertisers.
The research “suggests there’s advertising revenue being left on the table, and that media companies have not yet extracted full value out of the online medium,” argues Yuki.
More details here – http://bit.ly/bjy3SX

Linehan tops famous Irish Tweeters poll

Digital Times — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000

delman’s new Tweet measurement tool, TweetLevel, can calculate someone’s importance on Twitter. The algorithm driving the service takes into account the quality and quantity of someone’s tweets, how engaged and trusted a tweeter is, as well as how popular they are.

The ten most influential Irish celebrity Twitter users (tweeters) are:

1. Graham Linehan, TweetLevel score = 73
2. Rick O’Shea, TweetLevel score = 65
3. Dave Moore, TweetLevel score = 63
4. Mark Little, TweetLevel score = 59
5. Nicky Byrne, TweetLevel score = 59
6. Mark Feehily, TweetLevel score = 53
7. Sean Moncrieff, TweetLevel score = 51
8. Dermot Whelan, TweetLevel score = 49
9. Ray Foley, TweetLevel score = 45
10. Des Bishop, TweetLevel score = 45

f you’d like to try and join these people and climb to the top of the list simply go to tweetlevel.com. “Brands can learn from how celebrities are using Twitter and realise that if they want to influence people, they need to engage in an open and ongoing dialogue with consumers online,” said Mark Cahalane, MD, Edelman.

Watch Graham Linehan talking about using Twitter to counter right wing lies about health care systems in the US and the UK.