And more than half of us (50.3 percent) said that we go online to find entertaining video content, placing this activity fourth in the latest global rankings. As a result, were currently unable to offer many insights into digitals role in the education of younger children. Email followed in the early 1970s, but it wasnt until Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web some 20 years later that adoption of the internet really started to gain momentum. Please remove affected locations from your audience settings.. But what does meaningful connectivity look like? Kepios analysis reveals that global social media users have only increased by 32 million since the start of 2022, equating to quarterly growth of 0.7 percent. GWIs research also highlights the important role that connected devices can play in delivering financial empowerment, while simultaneously challenging stereotypes of whos using online banking today. This situation isnt unique to Afghanistan either, with Ooklas data revealing that median mobile connection speeds now outpace median fixed connections in a total of 51 countries. 6/F, Cheung Hing Industrial Building, 12P Smithfield Road, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong. For example, GWIs data reveals that at a worldwide level roughly 1 in 3 working professionals now uses social media to communicate with external suppliers and vendors. Marketers can now reach 970 million users aged 18 and above with ads on TikTok, which is almost 10 percent higher than the number of users that they could reach at the start of this year. Roughly 9 in 10 professionals in the Gen Z demographic say that they use social media for work conversations, with roughly 7 in 10 saying that they do so every day. Just before we wrap up this quarters analysis, here are a few random stats we identified in the latest numbers: Just in case youre still hungry for numbers, youll find loads more stats that I havent been able to cover in this article in our complete Digital 2022 April Global Statshot Report, which youll find in the embed towards the top of this article. With the exception of the highest-level metrics like internet adoption, most of the data we feature in our Global Digital Reports focuses on audiences aged 13 and above, especially working-age adults. to digest in this update. As a result, we need to go beyond looking solely at the quantity of people using the internet, and place greater emphasis on the quality of access and connected experiences. Meanwhile, the comprehensive 2021 edition of GSMA Intelligences State of Mobile Internet Connectivity (SOMIC) report also explores these issues, alongside more systemic challenges such as literacy and infrastructure. For example, 7 in 10 Facebook users say that they use the platform to communicate with friends and family, making this the most popular activity on Facebook. Meanwhile, Meta has not published ad audience data for users in Russia for any of its various platforms since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in late February.
Mobile users in Palestine currently suffer from the slowest mobile connections, with median download bandwidth in the country languishing at just 5.34Mbps in February 2022. Meanwhile, alongside China, users in Kuwait, Germany, and Saudi Arabia also delivered meaningful contributions to global consumer spend in TikTok in Q1 2022. Similarly, in 16 of those 18 countries, less than half of the population has access to basic sanitation services. However, literacy in a local language may still not be enough to unlock the full value of the content available on todays internet. And perhaps the most important takeaway from this latest update to the companys B2B dataset is that professionals still prefer to use a wide variety of communications channels for their work activities. Meanwhile, Wikipedia.org remains one of the worlds most-visited websites, reinforcing the importance of the role that finding information plays in the worlds internet activities. Global Pinterest ad reach stood at 235 million in April 2022, pointing to quarter-on-quarter growth of 4.1 percent. Individual country data reveals that TikTok is particularly popular with audiences in the Middle East and South-East Asia. However, mobiles share is considerably higher in countries across Africa and Asia, with Statcounter reporting that mobiles accounted for almost 86 percent of total web traffic in Nigeria in March 2022. Furthermore, in 6 of the 18 countries where internet penetration remains below 25 percent, the World Bank reports that less than half of the population currently has access to basic drinking water services. Interestingly, however, internet access either matches or exceeds levels of access to basic sanitation services in 8 of these countries, and we see a similar situation in a total of 28 countries around the world. As connected technologies advance and connection speeds improve, the internet is increasingly expanding beyond its initial focus on information and communication. Meanwhile, more than 4 in 5 working professionals now use social media for work-related communications. Metas audience reach numbers show the profound impact of people fleeing Ukraine due to the countrys ongoing conflict with Russia. Conversations with experts, colleagues, and peers remain the primary sources of information when B2B buyers are researching purchases, with roughly 9 in 10 corporate decision-makers citing these channels as influential in their work-related research. Age plays an important role in shaping device preferences though. Somewhat surprisingly though, these same decision-makers said they were more likely to use Facebook (61.4 percent), Instagram (53.6 percent), and WhatsApp (48.9 percent) than they were to use LinkedIn (36.9 percent) when researching potential B2B suppliers and partners. Semrushs data indicates that YouTubes website hosted almost 50 billion distinct user sessions in February, with visitors spending an average of more than 25 minutes on the site. This finding will have particular significance for policymakers and healthcare professionals, especially when it comes to considerations relating to the availability and accuracy of online information and advice. Staying in touch with friends and family ranked second, at 54.7 percent. However, progress in digital healthcare appears to be much slower across countries in Africa.
More than half (52.1 percent) of South Africas working-age internet users say that they have interacted with a banking, investment, or insurance website or app in the past 30 days, which is significantly higher than the equivalent figures for the United States (38.4 percent) and the United Kingdom (41.1 percent). Cell phones continue to be the worlds most-used connected devices, with GWI reporting that more than 92 percent of working-age internet users go online via mobile devices. For context, Chinas offline population accounts for just over 14 percent of the worlds unconnected in April 2022. Crucially, US consumer spend on TikTok has more than doubled in the first 3 months of 2022, with data.ai reporting quarter-on-quarter growth of 125 percent in Americans in-app TikTok purchases. More than 1 in 3 internet users aged 16 to 64 surveyed by GWI across the worlds larger economies say that researching health issues and healthcare products is one of the main reasons why they go online today. Our partner Semrush reports that YouTube was the most visited website in February 2022, making this one of the rare occasions when Google.com hasnt topped the global traffic charts. As a result, it seems clear that the digital gender divide is quite literally man made.. For example, GWI reports that half of all working-age adults go online to research how to do things, revealing that continuous learning is an important consideration for internet users everywhere. Ill be back again towards the end of July with our next Statshot report. Finding and consuming news was the third most common reason for going online, with 52.3 percent of the worlds working-age internet users citing this as a top motivation. However, a very different picture emerges at the other end of the spectrum. Social media platforms also rank relatively highly for frequency of use, with nearly two-thirds (63.2 percent) of professionals between the ages of 16 and 64 saying that they use social media for daily work communication. Meanwhile, the latest data from Statcounter shows that mobile phones accounted for more than 56 percent of global web traffic in March 2022, up from 54 percent this time last year. However, 88 percent of decision-makers also cited suppliers websites as being influential in their evaluation of potential partners, putting this channel ahead of demos, trials, and even trade shows when it comes to B2B product research. The worlds internet users appear to be increasingly interested in the. However, this figure is considerably higher across countries in Latin America, with more than half of Colombias working-age internet users citing health-related issues as a primary motivation for using the internet. However, the data we do have indicate that education remains an important driver for internet use amongst adult audiences too, and there are still plenty of important takeaways from this research. Its unclear how long this restriction might last, and it seems that Meta is the only social media company currently limiting ad targeting in this way. When women and girls are empowered through information and communication technologies (ICTs), societies overall benefit. This has particular relevance when we consider the latest research from GWI, which reveals that a whopping 92 percent of working-age internet users now stream movies and TV shows via the internet. Our partner Skai.io reports that the cost of 1,000 social media ad impressions (CPM) increased by 15 percent between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022. Meanwhile, low levels of digital connectivity are often symptomatic of broader infrastructure challenges. These findings have clear value for brands looking to develop a more strategic approach to social media marketing, because they highlight the different usage contexts and user motivations across each platform. But theres also some good news when it comes to language accessibility, with the use of online translation tools gaining momentum around the world. As you might expect though, users activities still vary meaningfully by geography and by demographic, so be sure to check out GWIs full dataset if youd like to learn more about the potential implications of this data for your brand. Indeed, GWI reports that 46.4 percent of working-age internet users around the world now watch online tutorials, how-to videos, and educational content every week. However, cryptocurrencies are also increasingly popular across South-East Asia, with more than 1 in 5 working age internet users in the Philippines (22.7 percent) and Thailand (20.3 percent) saying that they now own some form of crypto. Just before we explore each of these areas in more detail though, its worth noting that current data limitations may impact our ability to fully determine digitals potential role in each of these industries. Research from GWI reinforces these findings, with the companys global survey revealing that 3 in 10 internet users now make use of online translation tools every week. But wed be remiss not to acknowledge that adult sites also account for four of the top 20 places. However, perhaps surprisingly, GWIs data does reveal that older internet users are considerably more likely to use online banking, investment, and insurance services than younger users are. SimilarWeb also places TikTok.com i.e. Social media click-through rates (CTR) also fell sharply in the first three months of this year compared with the previous three-quarters, although Skais analysts caution that this may be partly due to an increased preference for video advertising. These properties attracted a combined total of 15.5 billion visits in February 2022, and accounted for more than 2.8 billion hours of online time in that one month alone the equivalent of 322,000 years of combined human existence. GWIs survey also finds that more than a quarter of working-age internet users (25.9 percent) now check health symptoms online every week, and once again, that figure tends to be higher across countries in Latin America and Africa. At 45.5 percent of working-age internet users, Brazil also sees relatively high rates of online banking adoption, as does Malaysia (44.1 percent). That CPM figure is roughly 24 percent lower than the average price marketers paid in Q4, but Q1 is typically the cheapest quarter of the year for ad spend, especially when compared to the holiday quarter that precedes it. It simply requires men to stop restricting womens access to the internet. Critically, closing the digital gender divide doesnt require any large-scale investment in infrastructure, nor does it require any new technology.
Metas data doesnt show any clear indication of where these people might have gone, however. In some countries such as North Korea unusually low levels of internet access appear to be largely the result of political decisions to block public access. Despite these changes, global audience totals for Facebook and Messenger have still grown quarter on quarter, but Instagrams reach has seen a more significant adjustment. Meanwhile, video formats may help to make content more accessible to people with lower levels of literacy, as well as to people with certain disabilities.
Give me a wave on Twitter or Linkedin if you made it this far, and let me know which of this quarters findings stood out most for you. So, despite the encouraging progress weve made towards universal accessibility, its clear that weve still got a long way to go before everyone who wants to use the internet is able to do so. After a dip in global reach at the end of last year, Pinterests planning tools suggest that the platforms ad audience has already recovered its losses. For context, if women had the same level of internet access as men currently do, we estimate that the global internet user total would already have reached almost 5.4 billion equal to 68 percent of the worlds total population. Subscribe to our blog for hot takes on social and internet culture. But its not just TikToks user numbers that are showing healthy growth. The latest wave of research from our partner GWI reveals that the worlds internet users now spend an average of 6 hours and 53 minutes online each day. Messenger services like WhatsApp have now overtaken text messages as a preferred means of communication at work, with almost 87 percent of respondents using these platforms at least some of the time, and 7 in 10 saying that they use them every day. However, if we look at the demographic profile of audiences aged 18+, it seems likely that users below the age of 18 will account for a meaningful share of the platforms overall user base, so its safe to assume that TikToks total ad reach is considerably higher than the published figures suggest. Back in 2003, William Gibson posited that, the future is already here; its just not evenly distributed.. This is by far the biggest Statshot report that weve produced to date, and in addition to our usual quarterly insights youll also find a wealth of new data in this update. Data from Google Trends reveals that translate was one of the top-ten most searched queries around the world in the first three months of 2022, and related queries in other languages (e.g. Its also worth highlighting that education, healthcare, and finance all feature in peoples top motivations for using the internet. The adoption of telehealth services has also jumped since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. continues to be a top force in online media, with the platform continuing to attract hundreds of millions of visitors to its web properties. One of the new additions to this quarters report explores peoples activities across different social media platforms. For example, Gen Z users are considerably less likely to go online via a computer than users in their parents generation are.
These trends may vary by country of course, but therein lies one of the most important takeaways for marketers: audience trends in one part of the world may have very little bearing on audience trends elsewhere, so do your due diligence, and check the data for your specific market(s).To help with that, be sure to check out our (free!) Its worth noting that channel preferences and platforms relative influence vary meaningfully by geography and demographic though, so be sure to dig into GWIs full Work dataset if youd like to know more about how these latest trends will impact your companys success. Once again though, this dataset demonstrates the diversity of the worlds online activities, reinforcing the idea that digital connectivity has become a layer that runs through almost every aspect of our daily lives. For a society, it can determine how realistic and how impactful digitalisation programs will be.. This digital gender gap is perhaps the most troubling aspect of uneven digital distribution, because various data points demonstrate that when they have equal access women tend to use the internet more than men do. And while were on the subject of younger audiences, Metas data offer plenty of evidence to counter recurring media reports that younger users are abandoning Facebook.