2009 Digital Media Review

February 22, 2010      Admin

Here is the 2009 Digital Media Review from comScore, which specializes in measuring the digital world (registration required). All the factoids you need on who’s using what (in the U.S.) to put your digital efforts into perspective.

A few things that struck me …

  • Reflecting the overall economy, retail e-commerce, at $210 billion, was down in 2009 year-over-year for the first time since measuring began … by 2% to be exact. So all you online fundraisers with YOY gains last year rejoice … you did better than the product merchants. Leading the few categories that were up for the year was books & magazines, up a modest 12%.
  • 80% of the U.S. online population visited a social media site in December 2009. No real surprise there, although you might be interested that the average visit to Facebook lasted 9 minutes. How many visitors to your nonprofit’s website stay that long?!
  • Online video continues to surge. 89% of the U.S. online audience watched some form of online video in December. In fact, the average online viewer watched 187 videos … that’s everything from TV shows to news clips to YouTube. Speaking of which, YouTube got 26% of those views, and the next 24 highest-ranked sites got only 22% of views, while 52% of views went to all other sites.

    comScore refers to this phenom as the "long tail" of online video viewing, noting the enormous fragmentation that has occurred in the video viewing world as consumers become more and more comfortable using their computers as viewing platforms.

How effectively is your cause or charity using online video these days?

Tom