Europeans’ media consumption pattern changes
According to Jupiter Research, Europeans’ usage of the Inernet has surpassed usage of the print medium. Average time spent online by Internet users is about 19 hours a week, compared to 15 hours in 2003. TV still continues to be the dominant medium.
As is to be expected, the two main factors driving the increase in online media consumption are age and increased broadband penetration. The greater the broadband penetration, greater is the online media consumption: France leads Europe on both these counts.
These changing usage patterns have an obvious impact on how companies spend their marketing dollars, something that website publishers of all kinds should be ready to take advantage of, irrespective of the monetization model they opt for.
More online shopping this year; one third of online shoppers shopping less
Sounds rather contradictory, doesn’t it? On the one hand, Jupiter Research is predicting that the online holiday shopping will reach $32 billion this year, an increase of 18% compared to last year, while the number of people shopping online will rise by about 6%. That seems to indicate that the amount of shopping per user is going up.
At the same time, another study (reported on Revenews by Jimmy Daniels) claims that almost one-third of people who shopped online last year are spending less this year due to concerns on security and Internet fraud. That Internet security is still such a limiting factor can be seen by the approx. 80 million Internet users (I believe these are US figures) who haven’t bought anything online.
While the opportunity is great, it is also a reminder that so much more needs to be done to get more converts to join the fold of online shoppers.
