Nielsen Data Report: September 2013

September saw the UK’s online universe hold steady around the 40 million users mark after a slight decline throughout the year. In total, 40.8 million people across the UK accessed the internet throughout the month, a year on year fall of 2.6 million users.

Out of all those online, 31% fell into the social grade B category (middle class professionals), 11% were not working and only 7% made up the A grade (higher managerial professionals).

London users made up a whopping 19% (7.8 million) of the digital universe, followed by the Midlands which took 13% of the total. 37% of the digital population had been educated to a degree level or further.  Further breakdowns can be found using the Universe Profile report here.

Entertainment sites made up a large proportion of online destinations, with 19% of the 200 most popular falling into that category. News and information – the original purpose of the world wide web, one might assume – came second, scoring 33 site in the top 200 (a 16.5% share).

Interestingly, there is only one entertainment site in the top ten (YouTube), whereas search engines account for 50%. Drilling down further, search portals only come third when looking at the top 200 sites, indicating that there are a limited number of those types of sites that users trust and enjoy using.

Special occasion sites -ranging to DHL to Moonpig – barely made it into the list managing only one site in the top 200 (Royal Mail with 2.4 million users).

Commercial Banks

September saw NatWest skip up two places to become the UK’s most popular online commercial bank with 3.1 million users visiting the site. As well as a 7% month on month increase, NatWest was also helped out by the fact that main rivals Lloyds TSB and Barclays both witnessed a drop in activity, down 15% and 7% respectively.

Out of the mostly popular banking sites, HSBC held visitor’s attention the most with users spending an average of 36 minutes in total. Barclays followed, with an average of 32 minutes with Bank of America clocking the lowest time from the top banking sites, with an average of 16 minutes per user.

RBS – The Royal Bank of Scotland saw the biggest month on month percentage increase, although the 19% rise only translated to jump of 165,000 users.

Not only did Barclays fall two places but the London-based universal bank suffered a loss of over half a million users, resulting in a total of 2.8 million visitors.

Member Communities

At the same time in the world of social networking, dominant king Facebook was dealt a small blow but still retained its title. September brought a loss of 855,000 users (a -3.6% drop) but remained the most popular social network and the third most popular online destination overall.

In total 23 million users logged onto Facebook, reaching 56% of the UK’s digital population, with each visitor viewing an average of 308 pages.

Despite some impressive growth and some significant losses, the top ten line up remained virtually unchanged, with only new kid on the block BuzzFeed pushing past relic Yahoo! Profile to gain 9^th place.

BuzzFeed – which brings users news, gossip and entertainment stories in list forms – has seen a year on year rise of 175% but still has a relatively small audience of 1.4 million viewers (a 4% reach). The social news website was launched in New York in 2006 and has only recently caught on this side of the Atlantic.

Photography sharing site Tumblr saw the biggest actual rise in the top ten, increasing its ranks with a 9% rise, with a total of 3.7 million users.

Videos

September looked to be a bad month for competing OTT VOD services Netflix and LOVEFiLM, with both properties dropping two places. Netflix remained slightly more popular, helped in part by the feverish anticipation brought on by the final four episodes of Breaking Bad, losing 6% of users and dropping to eighth place (266^th overall).

LOVEFiLM fared worse, down 15% and dropping to ninth place but that wasn’t the worst of it. According to Nielsen’s data, Netflix users spent an average of 2 hours and 28 minutes online compared to LOVEFiLM‘s average of 47 minutes.

The user generated world of YouTube remained dog top in September, recruiting 19.6 million users (a 48% share) and clocking the average time spent at 3 hours and 41 minutes.

There was also good news for the ITV Player which boosted it audience by 30% and jumped up four places in the top ten (and 83 places overall), no doubt helped along by the debut of period drama Dowton Abbey‘s fourth series.

Vube – the new contender to YouTube that offers popular uploads cash prizes, fell from the top ten after shedding 86% of its users month on month. This left the door open for Sky Go, which managed to enter the top ten by simply gaining an increase of 15%.

Further breakdowns and reports can found in MediaTel’s Online database.