UKOM Data Report: September 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.

Nearly 40 million people went online over the course of September according to new data released by UKOM. A UK audience of 39,505,000 people made up the online universe over the month, up by 640,000 since January. Summer traditionally shows a lull in online reach with users  returning throughout September, growing month on month by over one million as the winter draws nearer. This means that 63.9% of the UK’s population are now online, with men outnumbering the female users by over one million.

Breaking down the data by age and gender it is clear that men aged 50 and over continue to be the largest group of users with 17.8% of the online population. Women aged 35-49 are more likely to go online while the smallest group, with an online reach of two million, are men aged 18-24.

Users aged 18-24 have seen the most growth since January this year with a 7.7% increase, while the youngest users aged 2-17 have gone down in ranks, shedding 8.8%. Users aged 50+ may have the highest percentage of users in September (31%) but have seen little growth in the nine months since UKOM began releasing data, showing a slight increase of 0.2%.

Brands

Wikipedia and Google both saw huge jumps in audience in September while only two of the top ten brands lost users. Wikipedia attracted over 1 million more users to the site resulting in the biggest percentage change of 7.2%. The Google brand continued to go from strength to strength gaining an audience over 1 million people since August (up 3.2%). While traffic for Yahoo! stayed practically unaltered from August, keeping the brand the fourth most popular, it seems eBay was hit by recession anxiety. 760,000 users strayed from the auction brand over the month of September resulting in the biggest percentage change fall.

Newspapers

While August saw mostly increases in audience reading national newspapers online, September is more of a mixed bag for the ten most popular. Mail Online continues its sturdy dominance across the UK’s digital landscape although the Daily Mail site only displayed a slight increase for the month (0.3%), it was enough to keep it on top. Guardian.co.uk saw a much bigger rise in popularity over September by gaining an extra 327,000 users, an impressive month on month increase of 6.9%, edging its way to the top spot. The Sun lost the highest amount of users month on month, down a massive 17.2% but still managed to remain the fourth most popular national newspaper digital destination. The website for The Sun now remains the only News International newspaper free-to-view.

The relatively new Times site was down 38,000 users but still remains popular despite News International asking readers to part with their cash. Trinity Mirror Nationals, home of Mirror.co.uk, moved up one place by gaining 72,000 new users. Whispers that News of World would also be going behind Rupert Murdoch’s big bad paywall in October brought a huge jump in popularity for the website. Over September, the News International site saw the audience jump by a massive 55%, although it remained the ninth most popular newspaper site overall.

TV Catch-Up

Both the ITV Player and 4oD saw an impressive jump in popularity gaining 290,000 and 282,000 more users over the month respectively. This 19% increase moved 4oD up one place to become the third most popular TV catch-up service while ITV Player’s monthly increase of 25% managed to bump it up 74 places overall since August. It remained the fifth most popular catch-up site. Sky Player also saw a good month, boosting its audience by 73,000 and sending the BSkyB service up 169 places overall.

blinkBox, which offers newly released films as well as free TV episodes, jumped up four places in the top ten and grew by 13.5% in September. SeeSaw didn’t fare as well, dropping 348 places overall. The service, known as Project Kangaroo in a past life, holds free-to-view and paid content from BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and MTV and despite having  a rough month has actually increased its users by 97% since February of this year.