Nielsen Data Report: March 2013

The UK’s online population weighed in at 42.4 million users for the month of March, according to data released by online measurement company Nielsen.

The prolonged winter saw February’s audience fall to nearly the lowest level in a year but March brought an increase of nearly 700,000 users, a month on month increase of 2%.

As expected, London dominated the UK’s online universe when broken down by region. 19% (7.9 million) of users hailed from the capital in March, followed by the Midlands with 5.3 million (13%).

Users aged 50+ made up the highest age bracket at 13.8 million, representing 33% of the total online audience. The middle classes ruled the digital spectrum with social grade B making up 30% of the total UK online universe.

Further breakdowns can be found using the Universe Profile report here.

Top E-mail Sites

Windows Live Hotmail remained the most popular destination for emailing and also received a boost of over 1 million new users during March (a 9% increase). Despite the recent and significant rebranding (Microsoft has done away with the once ubiquitous brand and integrated it into Outlook) consumers were happy to ignore the changes made to the UK’s most popular e-mail service.

Outlook itself remained in fourth place but saw a 15% fall in users over the month – the biggest loss of the top ten. Despite losing 558,000 individuals, the site was visited by more than 3 million users. Pages per person dropped to 82 in March but the amount of sessions per user remained at 12.

Traffic for AOL Email increased its users by 9% in March, helping it move up one place and pushing Sky Email down to sixth.

Yahoo! Mail narrowly whipped past Google Gmail to claim the second place with over 8 million users and a 19% reach. Google’s email service wasn’t far behind, reaching 34^th place overall.

Top Messenger Sites

Despite the distraction on popular apps available on smartphones, messaging services still proved popular with the British public in March, whether they featured video communication or were simply text based. Skype, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2102 took the top two spots, with the video arm pulling in 10.7 million users and a 25% reach. Next up was the text based service, Skype Messenger, which was just behind with 9.8 million users. The amount of time each visitor spent with the service was also impressive, with both clocking in at 1 hour and 50 minutes per person.

Once the crème de le crème of online communication, Windows Live Messenger (formally plain old MSN Messenger) wasn’t quite the tool of choice. While March did see 8.2 million users using the service, this meant there was a 43% fall in two years.

While the top three messengers show impressive traffic, the same can’t be said for the remainders.

Yahoo! Messenger ended up in fourth place but was far behind the most popular services. Overall, the Yahoo! service landed in 556^th spot and managed 825,000 users, a month on month fall of 6%.

For once, a Google branded property wasn’t riding high in the top ten, with Google Talk only managing to place ninth, with an overall ranking of 2420^th. It wasn’t all bad news for the internet giant though – the service, which provides both text and voice options, was knocked down a spot by Meebo, which Google bought in June of last year.

Top Video Sites

As ever, YouTube remained the number one destination for online video in the UK, with a rise in users of over 1 million month on month. The premium home of user-generated and catch up content (ranging from random videos of kittens and episodes of Neighbours) saw 23.8 million users each spend a whopping two hours and 13 minutes on the site. Overall, the Google-owned property reached 56% of the UK’s online population.

Machinima‘s channel on YouTube, which features original programming along with trailers and news, jumped up one place to third position. The channel – the online home of exclusive Mortal Kombat and Battlestar Galactica content – attracted 2.3 million users in March, with each person spending over eight minutes on the site.

It wasn’t such good news for Channel 4’s catch up service 4oD as it fell down three places. Although the unique audience decreased by 200,000 users month on month, the video on demand service still managed to keep users on the site for nine minutes on average. In total, just over 2 million users visited the site over March.

Surprisingly, Netflix fell one place to tenth, knocked down by German file sharing site Movie2k.to. The American over-the-top provider of premium content, such as Arrested Development and Breaking Bad, may have lost 100,000 users but those that did visit the site each spent ten more minutes than in February, totalling at 34 minutes per person.

Despite YouTube boasting the greatest rise in users in March, video sharing site Vimeo claimed the biggest percentage jump. The site – founded a whole year before YouTube in 2004 – witnessed a 27% increase over the month. In total, Vimeo attracted 1.7 million UK users, resulting in a 4% reach.

Further breakdowns and reports can found in the Online database.