Digital Future report says Brits are most engaged internet users in Europe

The latest Digital Future in Focus report from ComScore has revealed that Brits are the most engaged internet users out of the 18 European countries analysed.

Europe accounts for 27% of the global internet audience and in 2012, 408.3 million Europeans surfed the web via a home or work computer, a 7% increase on the previous year.

Of these, Russia made up 15%, followed by Germany, France and then the UK. Finland, Norway and Ireland sat at the bottom of the table, all sitting around the 3 million unique user mark.

When it came to online engagement, Brits sat well above the 27 hour average for time spent online (37.3 hours), whilst Russia, Germany and Spain all sat beneath the average. Belgium saw the strongest growth spent per visit, up 2 hours in comparison to last year’s figures.

In the mobile phone market, 241 million people in the EU5 own a mobile phone, with Germany at the top of the chart with 61 million, followed by the UK (49.5 million), and then Italy, France and Spain.

The smartphone audience currently sits at just over 136 million and penetration is highest in Spain (66%), followed by the UK (64%), though it wasn’t until December 2012 that all of the EU5 crossed the 50% penetration mark.

In 2012 almost one third of page views across countries in Europe were from mobiles and tablets, and over 50% of the mobile audience in the EU5 used their mobile devices to access mobile media – significantly higher than the percentage for SMS and voice, 32.5% and 8.2%, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, the report reveals that PCs tend to be more popular through the day, whilst mobiles are most used in the early evening (between 5pm and 8pm) and tablets during primetime (8pm – midnight).

Mobile video experienced tremendous growth across the year, up 162%, and though online video was at a huge 158.9 million users, it remained fairly consistent over the year, with a 5% increase in users at the end of the period. Leading online video platforms across Europe are YouTube (Google), Dailymotion, Facebook and VEVO.

According to the study, one in three display ad impressions out of a total of 1.4 billion were never seen, with 72% and 55% of US and EU campaigns having ad impressions served in inappropriate brand content.

A full report of the Digital Future in Focus report can be found here.