Meeker: Internet Trends Changing Faster Than Ever
India has passed the US as the second largest global internet market, behind China, with 277 million users with an annual growth rate of 40 percent, according to the latest research released by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). The Internet Trends 2016 presented at Vox Media’s Code Conference on Wednesday shows major change happening in advertising methods, web search, and internet video viewing.
The report comes as DigitalOcean has opened up its second Asian data center in India, one of many US-based internet companies that has expanded to the country in recent months.
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It is little surprise that internet advertising is growing, or that mobile advertising growth outpaces desktop, but the extent of these trends is striking. There was a 20 percent increase in overall spending to $60 billion in the US in 2015, and mobile ad spend roughly doubled in that time. Still, the report shows that based on time spent, mobile still represents a major opportunity for advertisers, with 25 percent of time but only 12 percent of advertising spent on mobile. Non-mobile internet use takes 22 percent of consumer’s time, and 23 percent of advertising spending.
Ad blockers and muted videos represent major growing barriers to the effectiveness of that advertising, however, with 93 percent of internet users considering using ad blocking software, and 81 percent muting video ads. Privacy is also a looming issue, with 50 percent saying they are very concerned about data privacy and how companies use customer data.
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US data privacy regulation policy is in currently in development by the FCC, with advertisers expressing fear earlier this week that their effectiveness could be curtailed by proposed rules.
The report also highlights the declining use of text as a form of internet communication, suggesting it is being replaced in many areas by voice and image. The number of Baidu queries by speech, for instance, had reached one in ten in September 2014, when the company’s chief scientist Andrew Ng predicted that half of all searches will be done by voice or image in 2020.
As big data is adopted by businesses, opportunities for business apps will continue to emerge, according to the report, which is potentially a boon for both web hosts and cloud service providers.
A general point made throughout the report is that the pace of market transformation related to the internet is out of proportion with historical changes in media or technology. The rapid pace has made many internet companies highly profitable very quickly, but it puts pressure on companies to be nimble and forward-thinking.
Source: TheWHIR