UKOM Data Report: March 2011

March brought an increase in overall users for the first time in 2011, according to data released by UKOM. There were signs of recovery from the post-Christmas slump with a boost of 750,000 users to the online population, totalling just under 40 million for the month. 

The average monthly audience for 2010 was 39.3 million; the highest figure recorded was in April of that year, with 40.4 million users. Whilst the overall jump in audience through March isn’t impressive by itself, many popular brands and sites have reclaimed visitors and witnessed a month on month increase.

The ABC1 social grades made up 59% of people online, with the lower grades consisting of 16.9 million users.  Grade B has the highest actual amount of people, totalling 12 million. The most affluent slice of the social demographic pie, the A grade, represented the smallest group with only 2.3 million people.

Brands

All of the top ten brands saw an increase in traffic over March with four that increased individual audience by over 1 million people. MSN, Facebook, and the BBC all had an impressive month with the biggest actual change belonging to YouTube, growing its audience by 1.6 million since February.

eBay attracted enough new users to jump one place in the rankings, pushing past Amazon – which itself has seen some fluctuation in the past few months due to seasonal interest. The BBC had the second largest gain in users, up 1.5 million from February, moving up one place.

Online Newspapers

Overall the top ten newspaper sites increased their audience in March, with nine seeing a growth in traffic. While the humanitarian disaster in Japan attracted the attention of the country MailOnline grew in audience by 4.7% since February, keeping the Associated site as the most popular online newspaper.

Guardian.co.uk remained in second place but witnessed the biggest actual jump in traffic, gaining 352,000 users in March, helping the Guardian website gain some ground on MailOnline. METRO.co.uk, another Associated property, jumped into the top ten in March with an impressive MoM increase of 17%.

Video on Demand

YouTube increased its audience by a massive 1.6 million people over March (the very month Rebecca Black’s Friday went viral), helping the brand move up one position overall and reaching 50% of the online population. Time spent per person on the site also increased, up to one hour, nine minutes and 6 seconds (a 9% increase MoM).

Behind YouTube, BBC iPlayer had the second highest amount of users with 7.3 million over the month (with an active reach of 18%). Dailymotion saw the biggest percentage increase over the month with time per person rising by 41%. The website also saw its unique audience rise by 230,000.

Search

Google once again dominated the top ten search products, with three entries from the company. While Google Search and Google Image Search gained 640,000 and 597,000 new users respectively Google Product Search fell by just below 1 million (25% MoM). 

AOL saw the second biggest actual drop in March sending it down three places. AOL Search lost 262,000 users over the month and fell 43 places in the overall rankings. BBC Search jumped back into the top ten and up 36 places overall with a total unique audience for March of 2.4 million.