UKOM Data Report: March 2012

The UK’s online population once again passed the 40 million mark with a total of 40.3 million users making up the digital audience in March.

It was the third time since May 2011 that the audience grew past the milestone figure, with January 2012 seeing the highest audience UKOM has recorded so far (40.7 million). Although the total audience has fluctuated above and below 40 million in the last twelve months, the year on year increase in users stands only at 1%.

As usual London has the highest number of users, when looking at the online population by region. 7.4 million people accessed the internet in March from the capital city, followed by 5 million from the Midlands. London’s online population has grown by 12% since UKOM began reporting in January 2010, although the amount of non-respondents was a lot lower at that time (1.8 million).

Search and portal destinations made up the majority of the top 100 sites. Top destinations such as Bing, Ask.com, Google and BBC Search fell into this category, which mainly covers social media and search engines, totalled 21% of the top 100 sites. The nation’s thirst for breaking news and information helped sites like BBC News, Associated Newspapers and HuffingtonPost account for 19%. Surprisingly, destinations categorised exclusively as Entertainment only came third. YouTube, iTunes, BBC iPlayer and The National Lottery proved that the UK’s online population had no problem finding a balance in their work/play ratio.

Brands

There were no dramatic changes in the brands line-up in March, with Google remaining firmly at the top. The undisputed internet mainstay saw an insignificant drop in traffic since February, down only 60,000 users (-.2% MoM) but still managed to reach 84% of the online population.

Both BBC and YouTube had a healthy boost of over 770,000 users, both up 4% MoM. March was a seminal month for video-sharing site YouTube as the amount of time spent per person reached a record high (since UKOM began reporting). Visitors spent one hour and 38 minutes on the site as consumers continued to discover teh brand and increase the amount of time spent catching up on terrestrial TV shows.

It wasn’t all good news though as retailing giant Amazon had the biggest actual loss of the top ten, down 868,000 users MoM, resulting in a unique audience of 18.5 million. The first-stop for online shopping had a peak period of traffic in December 2011, with 22 million users visiting the site to get some last-minute Christmas inspiration.

Social Media

Google-owned Blogger continued to shed more users over March, displaying the biggest loss of the top ten. One of the original blog publishing services, Blogger has had a disastrous two months, down 2.8 million users since January and seeing the biggest actual loss of the top ten in March (-27%). Despite this, Blogger remained the second most popular form of social media.

Google+, the latest big name venture into social networking, increased its audience by 294,000 users, resulting in a total of 2.5 million for the month. While this is a record number for the platform it’s not a million miles off the amount that showed up at the official launch in September 2011 (2.3 million).

While Blogger’s popularity was on the wane Tumblr, witnessed a much better month, seeing the largest increase of the top ten. The micro-blogging tool had a shot in the arm of 397,000 users, increasing its user base by 15%. Content management system WordPress.com was down nearly 200,000 users but despite all this movement in traffic the top ten social site remained in the same ranking MoM.

As usual, Facebook remained on the top of the social heap, although users did drop slightly MoM. The social network reached 64% of the online population, proving that the underground Facebook resistance group still walks among us. Each person who visited the site in March spent an amazing six hours and 26 seconds untagging drunk pictures, boasting about holidays and stalking their exes. Facebook is also well above its competitors when ranked by pages viewed per person, a total of 676 for March. While this may seem extremely high, Facebook sits in the 18^th position when ranking the top 10,000 sites in March by pages per person, with browser-based game TribalWars in first place, with 5172 pages.

UK Newspapers

Six of the top ten online newspapers saw a drop in traffic over March with Mirror.co.uk being hit hardest. This comes on the back of February’s data in which all of the top ten shed users MoM. The flagship Mirror Group site was down 354,000 users compared to February, translating into a 22% fall. METRO.co.uk didn’t fare so well either, down 16.5%. On the flip side Telegraph displayed the biggest increase of the month, up 667,000 users, resulting in a total of 4.8 million users, and reaching 12% of the online population in March.

The Times grew by a small amount in real terms resulting in a 16% increase, helping the News International site move up one place. The unfortunate yin to The Times’s yang was the London Evening Standard which lost almost the exact amount The Times gained. Standard.co.uk dropped 16% of its users in March, forcing the site to slip one place.

Mail Online remained stubbornly perched in the top spot despite a small loss in users (-2%). Readers on the Daily Mail site also spent less time trawling through stories of Snooki and Kate Middleton’s latest escapades, with the average time spent per person down from 37 to 32 minutes. Remaining in second place was The Guardian which scored a 13% active reach in March. On average each visitor had four sessions over the month; Mail Online’s stood at six sessions per person.