Archive for the ‘Applications’ Category

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Scroll down the page for survey download links

The figures in our new Media Consumption & Habits of MENA Internet Users Survey simply confirm what everyone involved in the Middle East’s growing digital marketing industry has already been talking about for the past year or two: Internet connectivity has become pervasive amongst many of our key target audiences and is now a significant part of their daily lives. The new research survey conducted by Effective Measure in conjunction with Spot On PR, underscores that the Internet opportunity is not just something that exists in the USA or Europe, its right here in the MENA region too. It’s not just a rich thing. It’s not just a youth thing. (And its not just a Facebook thing either). The Internet’s reach is now much broader than that and its influence in the Middle East and North Africa is now truly rivalling its traditional media counterparts and providing marketers with real (and highly measureable) alternatives.

Here are some of the survey’s key findings:

- MENA Internet users now spend more time browsing the Internet than they do watching TV.

MENA Internet users daily access of Internet exceeds TV

- 88% of those surveyed stated that they access the Internet daily

- 71% of those surveyed stated that they watched television daily.

- Most traditional media have peaks and troughs in attention. Radio and newspapers achieve peak share of audience in the morning. Television audiences peak in the evening. However, the Internet holds audience attention fairly consistently throughout the day and well into the night.

- 28% more respondents watched TV during peak viewing hours than when viewership is at its lowest, at 7%),

- 20% of respondents stated that they use the Internet at any time-period surveyed, peaking at 33% in the evening (just 13% higher than the lowest period).

- Predictably, 73% of the survey’s respondents cited email as the activity they most often carried out online, ranking abover all other online activities.

- Social networking and search activities followed as the next highest ranking online activities for MENA Internet users, all coming it at about 40%.

- 54% of Internet users surveyed used mobile applications daily.

- 79% of Internet users surveyed spent up to three hours per day updating their social networks. 20% spent more than three hours updating their social networks.

- Internet users were more positive to companies and brands using “Internet marketing” than they were towards companies and brands using “social media marketing”.

- Most responses to our survey showed little variance between male and female respondents. However, there were a number of notable differences between the genders in their stated experiences with social media.

Survey Downloads

Download the full survey report (PDF)

Download the press release (English, Word doc)

Download the press release (Arabic, Word doc)

- – – -

Creative Commons

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users by Effective Measure and Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:

15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)

Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

Sign-up for more reports

If you would like to receive reports like this by email click here to join Spot On PR’s mailing list.

The Year Of Mobile?

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Spot On PR Mobile

I’ve been listening to technology pundits predict each new year to be the year of mobile for many years now. Some have written so many annual opinion pieces heralding “The Year Of Mobile” that it almost defies belief that they can still write about it with the same conviction. I might be forgiven for filtering this year’s predictions with a little skepticism, but also for pointing out that actually we have been moving ahead, year after year, with the adoption of mobile platforms and the increasing capability of those platforms and the networks that serve them. So, is it “The Year Of Mobile”? Or not?

Jared Reitzin, CEO, mobileStorm Inc., blogging on Mobile Marketing Watch, believes that it is now safe to say 2010 is the official year.

Blogger, ex-Forrester Research analyst and managing director of Dachis Group Peter Kim too blogs “2010: The Year of Mobile”.

Joe Marchese, president of socialvibe, says in his Mediapost.com “2010, The Year Of Mobile — Finally” saying in his piece that “2010 will be the year mobile marketing begins to realise the promise marketers have imagined for so long”.

Even The Times seems to concur that 2010 is “The Year Of The Mobile’ and quotes from December’s Morgan Stanley mobile Internet report, which says that “the mobile Internet is ramping faster than the desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices rather than desktop PCs within 5 years”.

Peter Kim credits better mobile phone functionality, growing choice of applications and increasing access via 3G and Wi-Fi hotspots with helping to boost the value that consumers get out of their mobile platforms (and new opportunities for marketers). We happen to agree over here at Spot On. We’ve seen social media adoption ramp up in direct relation to the availability of broadband Internet and a decrease in cost of broadband services. And so it stands to reason that an upswing in mobile broadband and Wi-Fi access has got to be good for mobile Internet adoption and mobile marketing.

It’s no secret that the arrival of Apple’s iPhone two and half years ago really stirred up the smart phone market and, among other things, showed device manufacturers, developers and carriers how to make networked mobile applications appealing. Today, Apple, Google, Nokia, RIM and others are all focused on helping to create easier-to-use, more content rich mobile services platforms that have mass consumer appeal. Innovations like Google’s voice search for mobile, new applications based on location based services and m-commerce consumers services using barcodes all point to mobile phones playing an increasing pivotal role in our day-to-day lives.

There’s arguably no “Year Of Mobile”, but an ongoing trend that is changing the communication game. However, if 2010 is the year when we will come to recognise the need to bring that platform into our thinking as marketers, then perhaps it could be, at last, the year! As Peter Kim says, mobile is fast becoming another check box for integrated marketing. As with social media platforms, mobile is going be become increasingly important to marketing and the only decision that marketer’s need to make is when the time is right to go mobile. We’ve already decided and so you may already be reading this blog post on our mobile site http://m.spotonpr.com

Some interesting links

2010: The Year of Mobile (Being Peter Kim)

2010, The Year Of Mobile — Finally (Mediapost)

2010 IS The Year of Mobile (Mobile Marketing Watch)

2010: the year of the mobile (The Times)

The Mobile Internet Report (Morgan Stanely)

Video: Mobile Apps Roundtable at Le Web (Ustream)