UKOM Data Report: July 2010

NIELSEN GLOBAL DATA PROCESSING PROBLEM: Data for the below report did not meet quality standards set by UKOM, and should be sourced as “Nielsen NetView” not “UKOM APS”. The affected MediaTel UKOM Data Reports, found in Newsline, dates from February to October 2010.

Nielsen and UKOM have rectified this fault and data has been re-issued and updated in the Online database which can be found by running reports here. Please contact your Nielsen client representative if you require further information.

The latest UKOM data shows that 39 million Britons accessed the internet in July, representing two thirds of the population (and eight tenths of those who ever go online).

The heaviest users continue to be those between 25 and 34, who averaged just over 3,000 page views per person over the period, compared to the average of nearly 2,300. Lightest users were those aged 2-11, averaging 320 pages each.

Six in ten internet users this month were ABC1, with social grade B alone accounting for 30% of usage. One in five users live in London, which is also where internet use is heaviest with an average of over 2,600 pages per person.

Top Web Brands

The top ten brands remained unchanged in July, with Google sites reaching 34 million (56%), MSN, Windows Live and Bing collectively reaching 28 million (46%), and Facebook 25 million (41%). Although increases and decreases were relatively small in percentage terms, Facebook added 827,000 users this month, MSN/Windows Live/Bing 580,000, and YouTube 428,000.

Just outside the top 10, the launch of the iPad and iPhone 4 continued to boost apple.com’s UK audiences, with 11 million visiting in July.

TV Sites

The top TV content site or application in July was BBC iPlayer, with 6.2 million users, followed by 4OD with 1.6 million and ITV Player with 1.1 million. These sites are dwarfed by the reach of YouTube with its 17 million UK users last month, but without detail on the proportion of YouTube users who view TV-style content such comparison is misleading.

While 4OD posted a strong 11% increase in users, ITV Player’s user numbers fell sharply by 42% from the previous month’s 1.8 million. ITV had been showing live World Cup games, and their May user numbers were 1.3 million, suggesting they enjoyed a temporary but strong uplift from the football content.

Demand Five and Sky Player both saw 17% month-on-month falls in July to 416,000 and 336,000 visitors respectively.

SeeSaw, the aggregator featuring content from broadcasters including BBC, Channel 4, and five, reached 302,000 people, but this is still fewer than those choosing to visit the individual broadcaster sites.

Radio Sites

While visits to dedicated TV on-demand websites probably imply an intention to stream video, there is less reason to think that visits to radio websites mean an intention to listen online. These sites include a lot of contextual content around the main radio output and are often intended for use in tandem with radio listening.

Top of the list of radio brand websites is BBC Radio, with 2.8 million users, up 9% on June. Unfortunately, no detail is available within this total, so it dwarfs the next biggest figures from the commercial radio sector, which saw a lot of month-on-month volatility.

Bauer’s music network (including Kiss and Magic, but not broken out), attracted 810,000 visitors in July, up 12%. Heart’s network reached 325,000, up 13%, just ahead of Classic FM’s 323,000, up a massive 73% on June. Early internet radio pioneers Absolute Radio Network followed with 270,000 (down 14%).

Global’s Big Top 40 show site reached 169,000, up by nearly half, while the other big gainer was Xfm Online, up 64% to 156,000 users. Top digital-only radio brand website was Planet Rock, with 104,000 users.

Newspapers

Mail Online rose back to 5.2 million users in July, 9% up on a brief dip in June. The Telegraph, which had been close behind, fell 12% to 4.3 million, but remained ahead of the Guardian, down 8% to 4.2 million. The Sun remained fairly steady at 2.9 million. If there is a battle to pick up Times Online users put off by the paywall, it looks like the Mail is winning it.

Newsquest’s local division totalled 2.3 million visitors, up 9% on the month, which must be of some consolation to a sector used to falling revenues and circulation.

As has been reported widely in the last week, Times Online (incorporating the Times and Sunday Times, and now behind a paywall), saw users fall by over a quarter from 2.3 million to 1.7 million. Within this figure will be people who visited the homepage and were turned away as non-subscribers, so the more telling figure is a 38% fall in page views from 21 million in June to 13 million in July.

Social Media

The category is a bit of a catch-all, with sites and applications offering a huge diversity of ways that people can keep in touch, play games, or share ideas and experiences.

Far in the lead is Facebook, with 25 million users in July and an 88% share of all time spent on social media sites. Blogging sites occupy second, fourth and tenth places in the list, with Blogger steady on 7.1 million, WordPress down slightly on 3.2 million, and TypePad up to 1.2 million. All of these are slightly misleading in themselves, as millions of people visit pages created using these systems, but embedded on other sites.

Twitter was up a strong 4% to 3.9 million, while MySpace will be pleased with an 11% increase to 3.1 million, as they continue to focus their brand more around music. The BBC’s Communities forums lost 15% of visitors on the month, to 3.1 million.

LinkedIn continued to thrive, bringing business networking to a very mainstream 2.3 million people a month, while generalist social networks Friends Reunited and Bebo continued to shed users, down 5% and 9% respectively, both now reaching 1.3 million.

Search

Google Search continues to dominate, reaching over four in five internet users in the month, and over half of the total population, at 32.3 million.  A review of Google’s own Insights tool reveals that the most searched for terms are other top web properties, highlighting the consumer practice of using Google in place of web favourites or typing out full URLs. Top UK search in July was for Facebook, followed by BBC, YouTube, Hotmail and eBay.

Next largest was Google’s own Images search, classified separately, with 12.6 million users in July. Among image searches, “Football” lead slightly ahead of “World Cup” and “England”.

Best of the rest was Yahoo! Search, with 7.4 million, up a healthy 4% on the previous month. Ask.com was close behind, with 7.1 million, up 9%.  Microsoft’s Bing Web was down slightly at 6.4 million, as the fifth most popular search engine.