January 30, 2019

Digital in 2019 | Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia in 2019: A Year of Digital Growth

Socialize, in conjunction with We Are Social and Hootsuite, the world’s leader in social media management, today released their Digital 2019 report, examining social media and digital trends around the world.
Here is a look at the most significant data coming out of the Saudi Arabia report, giving us a first understanding at the possible trends, changes and behaviors that could shape the year ahead.

Saudi Arabia leads the world in Snapchat, but Instagram is coming
Saudi currently has the world’s largest monthly active Snapchat audience, with almost 14m users.
However, since the end of 2018, there’s been a sharp drop of 15% in active Snapchat users, while Instagram’s user base has grown 8% in 2018, catching up quickly with 13m active users.
Instagram audience overview in Saudi Arabia

Instagram audience overview in Saudi Arabia

Facebook is still slightly ahead of them both with 15m, but it wouldn’t be a big surprise to see Instagram overtake them both as the year goes on.

Saudis are more likely to click on a Facebook ad than publish a post
On average, Saudis will click on six Facebook ads each month, while they only publish four posts, comment twice and share once. It’s a clear exhibition of how behavior on Facebook is shifting from content creation to content consumption.

This could also be an indicator of greater value being placed on the protection of personal information, given the increasing concern for social privacy.

E-commerce is thriving
While Saudi Arabia lags behind the global average when it comes to online spending, the last year has seen tremendous growth, with 64% of Saudis now saying they purchase a product or service online on a monthly basis.

This behavior is heavily weighted towards mobile, with 51% of people making a purchase on a phone, compared to just 24% on a laptop/desktop computer.

E-commerce spend by category in Saudi Arabia

E-commerce spend by category in Saudi Arabia

In 2018, the total value of the consumer goods e-commerce market in Saudi Arabia was estimated at $6.36 Billion, up 15% from the previous year. The highest spend was seen within the travel (including accommodation) category, which accounted for 50% of total online spend.

Video streaming and messenger apps dominate mobile activity
Of all internet users in Saudi, 89% use mobile messenger apps every month – an increase of 6% since last year. Similarly, 90% of Saudis now watch videos on their mobile each month, a rise of 8% in the same time period.

Most active social media platforms in Saudi Arabia

Most active social media platforms in Saudi Arabia

It’s unsurprising then, that the platforms with the highest penetration across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (survey based) are YouTube and Whatsapp.
January 17, 2019

Global trends shaping marketing in 2019

It’s tough enough for brands to keep track of tech and innovation trends, but 2019 is likely to see an acceleration and expansion of this change. From gaming and voice-activation, to AI-driven content and social commerce, evolution will be all around us.

To help marketers get to grips with this, some of the senior leadership from our offices around the world have shone a spotlight the big trends to look out for and identified their likely impact on the marketing industry in 2019.

 

Social Commerce

Nathan McDonald, Co-Founder and Group CEO of We Are Social

Social commerce, once the awkward cousin of e-commerce, has grown up. Startups using a Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) model showed that you could build a brand with a great product, and mastery of social. The DTC crowd will start to be threatened by traditional retail players getting into the action. With more competition for the attention (and wallet) of consumers, the cost of social advertising and influencers is set to increase.

Yet that first click needs to convert, so the platforms are building features to make the path to purchase and sharing as seamless as possible. With more categories of product and service (from furniture to funerals) trying to find their own social commerce angle, we will see new ways to discover, trial and recommend – not just transact.

A new kind of retail experience is emerging, enabled by platforms eager to facilitate the changes shaking up the retail world. So far, the evolution of advertising within social environments has shown that the balance between ‘social’ and ‘commerce’ can be difficult to achieve: user experience, privacy, and regulatory challenges abound. For content to be social AND shoppable it needs to be subtle, because there’s a certain tension between building a brand and getting the sale. Remaining authentic and relevant will work over the long term, because who do you really trust with your credit card?

 

Gaming

Benjamin Arnold, Managing Director of We Are Social New York

2018 was a monumental year for the mobile gaming industry. YouTube had its biggest 12 months ever in gaming, with over 50 billion hours of game-related content consumed, while Amazon-owned Twitch also saw exponential growth in its number of creators, viewers and the total volume of content consumed.

Unquestionably, the success of global phenomenon Fortnite boosted overall numbers beyond expectations, but very few in the industry are predicting any sort of slowdown in 2019. As Gen Z continues to subvert Millennial social behaviors, game-focused platforms and eSports, in general, are moving very quickly from the periphery to become the platform of choice. Advertising and partnership opportunities for brands within this industry are evolving too. The likes of KFC and Old Spice have shown over the past few years that good returns can be achieved through innovative and creative social thinking. What’s more, the opportunities for gaming creators and influencers in 2019 are apparently limitless.

Breakout gamers such as Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who recently claimed to be earning six figures a month just from streaming, are becoming the darlings of the influencer space for youth-focused brands. As a result, both YouTube and Twitch are actively expanding the ways in which they bring in these stars of the future and facilitating their commercial development. Twitch has increased its number of Partners and sanctioned Affiliates by 86% year-on-year, while YouTube is introducing new features such as Super Chat, channel memberships and merchandising. This is all aimed at encouraging larger numbers of aspiring gamers to enter the space, grow their own captive audiences, and then monetize their personal brands to significant effect – for themselves and for the industry at large. Expect even more record-breaking activity in 2019.

 

New Masculinity

Jim Coleman, CEO of We Are Social,  London

In the wake of #MeToo, masculinity has become an explosive topic. Advertising’s hyper-masculine “ideal” has both reflected and contributed to the formation of what’s recently been dubbed “toxic masculinity” – the catch-all term for extreme gender performance in men, covering traits like dominance, emotional unavailability and sexual aggression. In 2018, this problem was really thrust into the spotlight.

“New Masculinity” – one of the trends we identified in our 2019 Think Forward report – is an area we see gathering momentum in 2019 (and beyond) to drag male stereotypes in marketing out of the ’80s and into a more inclusive discourse. Brands play a significant role here – as content producers that speak to the intrinsic motivations driving men on a daily basis, it’s the collective responsibility of brands and agencies to focus on the similarities between the genders, not the differences.

Just this week, Gillette’s ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’ ad has caused uproar with how it’s approached this topic in an attempt to address the current zeitgeist. But perhaps the best role for most brands is one of the stealthy mediator, building on the multifaceted masculine realities, instead of reductive and outdated ideals. Brands should be taking a more nuanced approach to targeting men in advertising, both to detoxify the masculinity movement and to properly resonate with modern male consumers.

 

From Voice-Activated AI to Mind-Activated AI

Sandrine Plasseraud, CEO and Founder of We Are Social Paris

The democratisation of voice assistants continues to expand, reflected by the increasing number of voice-based solutions in our devices and daily lives. Global voice commerce is also expected to increase by from $2 billion to reach $40 billion by 2022, according to a OC&C Strategy Consultants survey, enabled by the adoption of smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home.  

Still, marketers will face significant challenges. Brands need to alleviate consumers’ pain points, not add to them, and to ask themselves if, and how, they can fill a real need in their customers’ daily lives through voice-activated technology.

But what if our thoughts alone could control our technology? At We Are Social Paris we have been incubating Mentalista, a startup that has developed an algorithm to analyse images from the brain’s visual cortex. These images are then materialised by electrical impulses and used to programme an action. It has, for example, developed the first football game to be driven by players’ thoughts.

So voice activated interactions are definitely going to be part of our daily lives in 2019 and beyond but we also believe that, in the near future, we will see brain-environment interactions take over part of voice-environment interactions.

 

The ‘Storyfication of Social’

Gabriele Cucinella, Stefano Maggi and Ottavio Nava,  Co-founders and CEOs of We Are Social Milan and We Are Social Madrid

As Stories-based formats continue to increase penetration and engagement across all platforms (growing 15x faster than feed-based content), brands will need to take this form of communication more seriously, not just treating it as a nice add-on for younger audiences, but making it more central to their content strategies. Of course, this requires some level of technical understanding: of short vertical videos; Stickers; geotags; and the whole set of “Stories, how to?” questions. More importantly though, brands will be required to evolve their language and storytelling.

They will need to think of their Stories as an interactive journey because tapping, replying and, in general, being active with the interface has become a critical engagement factor. People feel more connected when they can be part of the story and not just spectators. Camera phones will increasingly come to be considered as the lens between realities and Stories are a great canvas to play with these. That’s why creating bespoke visual assets will be more important for brands – people love to play with Stories, add their personal creative touch and share the result.

 

AI – Rise of the Machines

Roberto Collazos Garcia, Managing Director of We Are Social Munich and Berlin

Interest in artificial intelligence’s impact on content marketing is heating up: the technology’s capabilities are beginning to be understood and more broadly implemented by marketers. As AI tools for social media continue to evolve, marketers are able to better understand consumer behaviours, which consequently leads to richer insights adapted to new situations in real time. The superior speed of machine learning over human analysis offers huge benefits in terms of understanding of your audience, competitors, and content positioning.

Armed with these insights, you’ll be able to create the most impactful social content for your brand based on data. For example, Twitter makes use of neural networks to resize and crop photos in order to make this content more appealing to the user. To achieve this, AI analyses eye-tracking data to learn which parts of a photograph are most attractive and to then decide which part to show to the user.

 

From Newsfeed to New Feeds

Akanksha Goel, Founder and Managing Director of Socialize

With an increasing preference for privacy, we’re going to continue to see less public sharing across major social platforms, as people switch their activity from their newsfeeds to their new feeds of choice – private groups and messaging apps.

As more people embrace private (or dark) social, we will see a wider set of tools and functionality added to messaging apps to give users more creative options when communicating in chat groups or sharing content directly with friends.

Brands will also invest more in creating experiences on these private ecosystems, with chatbots becoming more mainstream as businesses take advantage of personalisation that can be delivered at scale. The biggest growth in this area is likely to be driven by the roll-out of WhatsApp Business across markets, leading to a resurgence of brands leveraging conversational AI for customer engagement.

And, as brands continue to look for new places and ways to connect with an engaged online audience, we’ll see marketers testing alternative platforms where consumers are sharing more. For example,  TikTok is poised to be 2019’s platform of choice in the Middle East.

 

Keeping it Real

Christina Chong, Managing Director of We Are Social Singapore

Authenticity. That’s what 2019 on social is all about.

So I should really live stream this. Right now, On Twitch.

But they made me write it down, and “curate” it with proper spelling. They’re “so millennial” as the Gen Z’ers would say.

And when “so millennial” becomes a teenage insult, you know that there’s a desire to keep it real. A backlash against the curated, the fake views and fake news.

So how will social media keep it real in 2019?

REAL BUT SMALL: micro-influencers. Influencer fraud is big news. It’s estimated that almost 15% of all social engagement comes from bots. So, increasingly, what the super-engaged small but real communities of micro-influencers will be more and more important to brands and consumers.

REAL TIME: brands will NEED to respond quicker. Real-time response strategy and micro-targeting of media at UBER-fans. You want a human brand, so act like a human.

REAL VIDEO: video everywhere. But not slick, big budget. Low quality, vertical, super-authentic. TikTok, Stories and real lighting.

REAL BUT AUGMENTED: With Facebook and Instagram introducing native AR ads this year, bringing augmentation to reality becomes Pokemon Go easy.

REAL ETHICAL: As Facebook scrabbles to fix its problems, people are really starting to care about where their internet comes from and where their data goes. We’re seeing a growth from curated public-facing stuff to closed groups, video and chat-based private channels – Stories on WhatsApp is the fastest growing feature this year.

So 2019, keep it fast, keep it fun, keep it real.

 

On the Frontier of East-West Mobile Payment

Donald Wong, Head of We Are Social, Hong Kong

As the litmus test to see if Chinese payment apps could go toe-to-toe against global e-wallets, look no further than Hong Kong as ground-zero in the proxy battle to reign supreme in mobile payment. The Octopus Card has been a local staple for on-the-go paperless payment of the city for decades, but it hasn’t gone outside of the city’s confines, or transformed the city into a cashless one just yet.

Chinese society (if only in the big cities) has practically gone cashless, so it’s only natural for Chinese mobile payment powerhouses AliPay and WeChat Pay to continue the push here, and Octopus to counter with its own “O! ePay” app. The mobile payment push will be amplified by banks as they leverage Apple Pay and Google Pay to incentivise people to skip both paper and plastic and whip out their phones for payment instead. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen a 30% increase in mobile wallet users from 2.46 million to 3.20 million in 2018 amongst mobile users. With transformation and innovations in shopping experiences, such as WeChat Pay experimenting with unmanned shops and global clothing giant UNIQLO opening its online shop in 2018, commerce will be fanning the flame for electronic and mobile payment adoption as people get more comfortable with it across all facets of their lives.

What happened in Hong Kong in 2018, as mentioned, is just a proxy for the bigger global picture. For 2019, marketers should be looking to exploit this growing trend, which is bound to go global and to reach a larger scale, by coming up with innovative campaigns for brands and merchants.

 

Social Media Metrics Take on New Meaning

Pete Lin, North Asia Regional Managing Director

Ten years ago, at the time of We Are Social’s founding, the usage of social media for marketing purposes was seen as innovative by some and gimmicky by others.

Four years ago, during the time of our Shanghai office’s launch, we found a diverse mix of expectations from brand managers for their social media programmes. Some wanted social media to elevate their brand image, while others wanted social media to drive direct sales.

Now, with our presence in North Asia having expanded to three offices across Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, the brand managers we work with have a common attitude: they now see their social media presence as the most essential representation of their brands. This means that the social media metrics of views, Retweets, Likes, and comments, which were deemed unimportant just a decade ago, have now become the barometers of a brand’s health. We no longer expect brands to come to us and ask “how will this Tweet drive sales for us?”, because they understand already.

 

The Rise of AI Influencers

Suzie Shaw, Managing Director of We Are Social Sydney

Kylie Jenner is the world’s highest-paid celebrity under 30 and is on track to become a billionaire more quickly than Mark Zuckerberg did. Earlier this year, a passing remark from her about Snapchat wiped $1.3bn off its market value, underlining the mainstream power of global influencers. It’s fair to say influencer marketing has now matured, and we’re coming to the end of the beginning of this phenomenon.

In fact, we’re entering a new phase, where clever content creators are building followings behind the next generation of so-called “AI Influencers”, whose poster-girl is “woke” 19-year old, Lil Miquela. These AI characters look remarkably real. They pose for photos, and wear the latest trends in fashion and make-up, just like human influencers. And with strong followings and engagement, they’re now adorning magazine covers and featuring in major brand campaigns from Louis Vuitton to Ugg.

Despite their lack of physical reality, these AI personae are anything but superficial; like characters in any major franchise, they have their own values and evolving storylines, and they have the power to make us question what is real and what is manufactured.
October 17, 2018

Q4 2018 internet report: Almost 4.2 billion humans are online

The 2018 Q4 Statshot report from We Are Social Global Consultant Simon Kemp is in – and as usual there are a number of interesting developments happening every single day in the world of social and digital. Read on to find out more…

 

The State of the Internet in Q4 2018

The data in Hootsuite and We Are Social’s new Q4 Global Digital Statshot report reveal that the ‘Next Billion’ is fast becoming a reality, as more and more people across the developing world connect to the internet.

Millions of people across Africa and South Asia came online for the first time in the past three months, with almost all of these new users accessing the internet solely via mobile devices.

There have been some meaningful changes to social media numbers too, although some of the most interesting findings in this quarter’s report relate to declines in social media audiences, especially amongst younger Facebook users.

It’s also been a bumper quarter for mobile, with global users spending $20 billion on apps in the past three months – that’s equivalent to more than $150,000 every minute between July and September.

You can read the full report in the SlideShare embed below, but read on for our in-depth analysis and commentary on the most important findings.

Key numbers

Here are the essential headlines from this Q4 report:

  • There are almost 4.2 billion internet users around the world in October 2018, up 7 percent since this time last year.
  • Around 3.4 billion people around the world used social media in September 2018, up 10 percent versus September 2017.
  • More than 5.1 billion people now use a mobile phone, with most using a smartphone.

Connecting the future

68 million people came online for the first time between July to September 2018, which translates to growth of more than 1.5 percent in just three months. That roughly matches the pace of growth over the past year: 284 million new users have come online since September 2017, equating to year-on-year growth of roughly seven percent.

Social media users are growing even faster though, with 320 million new users signing up between September 2017 and October 2018. Growth in social media use via mobile devices takes things a step further, with almost a million people starting to use mobile social for the first time every day over the past year.

Data from GSMA Intelligence shows that more than two-thirds of the world’s population now owns a mobile phone, with roughly 60 percent of these people owning a smartphone. As a result, mobile growth trends are a little slower than those for internet or social media use, but roughly 100,000 people started using a mobile phone every day over the past year.

The total number of mobile subscriptions in use in October 2018 stands at 8.9 billion. That means that the average mobile user still maintains more than one mobile number, but the average number of subscriptions per user continues to fall as people consolidate mobile activities onto a single device.

Mobile first

Mobile still accounts for more than half of all global web traffic, but the share of traffic coming from laptops and desktops has actually increased by two percent over the past year.

The share of total web traffic coming from other devices – including tablets – continues to decline, but this may be in part due to an increase in the total volume of traffic from mobile phones and laptops, rather than because people have reduced their use of devices like tablets.

Despite the slight fall in mobile’s share of total web traffic, people report that they are significantly more likely to turn to their phones when they want to go online. The latest findings from Google’s Consumer Barometer survey suggest that we’re five times more likely to choose our phones over a computer or tablet when it comes to accessing the internet.

There are a few potential reasons for this imbalance between stated device preferences and actual web traffic.

Firstly, many people still perform work-related internet activities via a computer, and these activities likely account for a sizeable share of overall web traffic (considering that work time accounts for a significant portion of our waking hours).

Similarly, people often turn to mobile devices for ‘quick-fix’ needs such as checking the weather or performing simple web searches. While these activities account for a meaningful share of online session frequency, they don’t require people to browse through numerous different pages to achieve their desired outcome, so this frequency doesn’t necessarily translate into an equal share of total web traffic.

Differences in connection speed may also play a meaningful role in influencing which devices people use, with the average fixed internet connection still twice as fast as its mobile equivalent.

Mobile speeds dip

Indeed, the average global mobile connection speed decreased slightly over the past three months, while average fixed speeds are up by more than three percent since July.

Singapore tops Ookla’s fixed connection rankings with an average speed of 189 Mbps. Connections in six countries around the world now average more than 100 Mbps.

Norway tops the mobile rankings with an average connection speed of 63 Mbps, just ahead of Qatar. Mobile connection speeds now average more than 50 Mbps in eight countries around the world.

Top websites

Alphabet Inc. continues to dominate the world’s top website rankings, with SimilarWeb and Alexa both putting Google.com and YouTube.com in the top two positions. SimilarWeb also features three more of the company’s local search sites in its top 20 ranking: Brazil, India, and the UK.

There have been some changes in these top rankings though, and the rise of the AMP Project is particularly worthy of note. AMP’s efforts to provide publishers with a faster mobile experience seem to be paying off, with SimilarWeb ranking AMP the 17th most-visited site on the internet in its latest monthly rankings.

Meanwhile, shopping sites continue to feature heavily in Alexa’s website ranking, with Chinese e-commerce sites in particular consolidating their grip. The company’s latest global data suggest that both Tmall and Taobao now attract significantly more visitors than Amazon, although their data doesn’t offer any insights into how many of these visitors turn into paying customers, or how much they spend.

Fashion forward

GlobalWebIndex’s research can help us make sense of broader conversion trends, though. The company’s latest data show that nine in every ten internet users visits at least one online retail site each month, and three-quarters go on to actually buy something.

Shopping behaviours vary slightly between men and women, with women more likely to use a shopping app on their mobile compared to men.

Data from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey shows that fashion remains the most popular category for online purchases, with clothing and shoes topping the list of e-commerce purchase categories in the past twelve months.

These categories also captured the greatest share of total e-commerce spend during 2017, as we reported in our larger annual report back in January.

More talk, more action

Most internet users still research brands and products online, but Statista’s latest data suggests that there are some meaningful differences across countries. Four in five shoppers in Brazil say that they ‘always’ conduct online research before making a major purchase, but in China, that figure is barely one in three.

And talking of search, GlobalWebIndex’s latest data shows that people are increasingly turning to voice to help them find what they’re looking for. 38 percent of internet users surveyed around the world in Q2 report using voice-enabled features in the past 30 days, and that figure jumps to 45 percent and above when we zoom in on users below the age of 35.

Interestingly, the data suggest that people in developing economies are more likely to use voice search than people in more developed markets, with almost half of all internet users across India, China, and Indonesia reporting that they used voice search or voice commands in the past month.

Privacy concerns vary by country

Privacy fears have been a recurring theme throughout 2018, so we’re pleased to include some new insights from Statista in this new report. The company’s most recent Global Consumer Survey found that 42 percent of the world’s internet users fear that their data is being “misused” online, although – once again – there are some significant differences across cultures.

There are no clear trends in this data to suggest why people in one country might have more heightened privacy concerns than those in other countries, but it’s worth pointing out that users in Spain – where the levels of concern are greatest – are more than twice as worried as users in Nigeria.

Losing face?

Mark Zuckerberg probably won’t remember 2018 amongst his favourite years, but Facebook continues to grow its global user base despite the various scandals and setbacks that the company has faced over recent months.

The world’s largest social site added 38 million new users in the three months to June, representing 1.7 percent growth quarter-on-quarter. That growth might not have been everything that investors were hoping for, but Facebook still accounts for roughly two in every three of the world’s social media users.

Facebook’s advertising tools suggest that growth hasn’t slowed through Q3 either, with the platform’s latest audience data reporting growth of 65 million users since July. However, these numbers only reflect changes in the platform’s potential advertising audience, and may not translate into similar growth in monthly active users.

The latest advertising audience numbers contain some bad news for the Mountain View team, too. In particular, the latest numbers show that advertisers can now reach 3 million fewer 13 to 17 year-olds on Facebook compared to July 2018, with young women leaving the platform even faster than young men.

Snap ’em up

But Facebook’s loss may be Snap’s gain. We’re pleased to be able to offer detailed insights into Snapchat’s advertising audience for the first time in this new report, and the numbers are quite revealing.

It might not come as a surprise that Snapchat’s average user is significantly younger than Facebook’s, but the gender balance will certainly be of interest, especially to marketers.

Almost six in ten users in Snapchat’s global advertising audience are female, compared to a 57:43 male:female skew on Facebook. In some countries however, Snapchat’s data suggests that the platform’s advertising audience is even more female-skewed. In Kazakhstan, for example, female users account for a whopping nine in ten of the total potential advertising audience.

The United States accounts for slightly less than one-third of Snapchat’s total advertising audience, but the rest of the ‘top 20’ countries shows some good diversity. So, while the company’s latest user growth figures may have disappointed investors, the platform still offers global marketers an interesting opportunity to reach younger, female audiences.

A key question remains though: is Snapchat the best channel to reach these younger audiences, or is Instagram a better bet?

Social climbing

The answer to that question depends on a large number of different factors, most of which will be specific to the advertiser’s particular needs and context.

However, audience reach will likely play an important role in decision-making, so it’s worth noting that Instagram’s overall advertising audience is more than double the size of Snapchat’s audience.

But what about that elusive, younger demographic?

Here are the cold, hard facts:

  • Global users below the age of 25 that advertisers can reach with Instagram ads: 196 million
  • Global users below the age of 25 that advertisers can reach with Snapchat ads: 329 million

But Instagram doesn’t just appeal to Gen Z. In fact, the latest figures show that brands can now reach more than 100 million users over the age of 45 via Instagram ads.

Perhaps Zuck still has something to smile about after all.

It’s not all good news for advertisers though, with the latest data from Locowise showing that organic Facebook reach continues to decline.

The average Facebook page reached 5 percent fewer people organically in Q3 versus Q2, and page owners can now expect to reach just 6 in every 100 of their fans if they don’t boost posts with paid media.

Recent algorithm tweaks seem to be working in Facebook’s favour, with the number of pages investing in paid media increasing by four percent in the past three months.

However, Locowise’s latest data suggest that these paid investments aren’t delivering the impact that they used to. The average contribution of paid reach as a percentage of total page reach has dropped by four percent in the past quarter, suggesting that either pages are getting less reach for their investment, or that they’re simply investing less (even though a greater number of pages now invest in paid media).

Either way, marketers should explore the broader trends in the Facebook reach and engagement numbers across our previous reports to help inform their social media strategies for 2019 – you’ll find the Q1 data here, Q2 here, and Q3 here.

Furthermore, if previous years are any indication of a ‘pattern’, it’s likely that Facebook will introduce yet more changes to its algorithm in early 2019, and it’s unlikely that these changes will work in brands’ favour.

As a result, my advice to marketers would be to take a more ‘balanced diet’ approach to social media in their plans for next year, and to avoid putting all of their eggs in one (Facebook) basket. You’ll find detailed breakdowns of the potential advertising for each of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat in the report embed at the top of this post.

Don’t worry, be appy

It’s been a good few months for mobile apps, with App Annie reporting some impressive stats in its latest quarterly round-up.

Of particular note is the fact that the total amount of money spent on mobile apps around the world in Q3 reached $20 billion, up 20 percent versus this time last year.

This spend equates to roughly $3.70 for every smartphone in use today, with mobile games claiming the lion’s share of this revenue.

But it’s not all about games: Netflix and Tinder continue their impressive standing in the top-grossing apps in the App Annie’s global latest ranking.

Our insatiable appetite for mobile data shows no signs of slowing either, with the latest numbers from Ericsson suggesting that the average global smartphone user now consumes more than 3.8GB of mobile data each month.

Forecasts for 2019

All the data in this final update report for 2018 suggest that we’ll have plenty of exciting stories to report in our flagship 2019 Global Digital report, which we’ll be publishing in late January.

In particular, look out for:

  • Accelerating growth in internet users across developing economies, especially in Africa.
  • Continued strong growth in overall social media user numbers, but some meaningful declines in the audiences of individual social media platforms.
  • A jump in the total value of consumer e-commerce spending, with strong growth in areas such as fashion and grocery.

We’ll also be reporting some longer-term growth trends based on the data we’ve collected over recent years, and we’ll be adding a wealth of new data points too.

To give you an idea of what you can expect, here’s a ‘replay’ of our January 2018 report:
September 20, 2018

We Are Social Expands into Madrid!

BIG NEWS!

We are thrilled to announce the official opening of a brand newWe Are Social office in none other than… Madrid!

A bustling social and cultural hub of both Europe and the world, Madrid has been an ambition for the We Are Social network ever since we started our global expansion.

Well, today’s the day! We are officially in España and ready to get to work with a top-class team in what is now our 12th office, in 10 countries, across five continents.

With an already enviable list of clients, the Madrid office will immediately start servicing some of our network’s iconic brands, including both Lavazza and Bic.

Well-known for its creative talent, the team will be led by Managing Director, Alberto Jose Pachano Gonzalez, working hand-in-hand with David Sousa as creative lead.

Co-founders and CEOs of We Are Social Milan – Gabriele Cucinella, Stefano Maggi and Ottavio Nava – will become joint CEOs of We Are Social Italy and Spain, so the foundation for successful, innovative work is already in place.

Just three months after expanding into Dubai with Socialize, this exciting news marks an inspiring new chapter in the We Are Social history books, and the latest step forward in our global social expansion.

For now, there’s really only one thing left to say… ¡Bienvenido Madrid!
September 16, 2018

How to #BravetheBacklash of Online Hate

We all know social media is a powerful force for good, enabling people all over the world to connect and share ideas on everything from global politics to chicken nuggets. Unfortunately, some of the ideas in between aren’t worth hearing. Some are ill-timed, some are misinformed and some are just plain hateful.

As an agency on the forefront of social and digital advertising, We Are Social has never dodged the issue of hate on social platforms, instead making a point to pursue equality for all and help clients take a stand against online hate.

After months of research and hard work from a wide range of teams spanning Strategy, R&I, Editorial, Design and Production, we now have a definitive anti-hate resource that everyone can use to make their social channels safer and more inclusive, in the form of this white paper – ‘Braving the Backlash’.

“We’re increasingly seeing more and more brands taking part in diversity campaigns – but in taking this stance, there is the risk of hateful comments seeping into brand communities online.”

The aim of the paper is to help brands on social to avoid the common tactic of simply ignoring hate and pretending it’s not happening – and instead face the problem head on, in the right way.

Online hate is a problem that’s never going to go away, which is why every brand needs a clear anti-hate policy. This paper outlines how you can create one that suits your brand and how you can empower your community managers to successfully respond to hate speech online, through the use of our ‘Three Rs Model’.

Charlie Cottrell, head of editorial at We Are Social in London said: “We’re increasingly seeing more and more brands taking part in diversity campaigns – be this around inclusion or minority issues – but in taking this stance, there is the risk of hateful comments seeping into brand communities online. ‘Braving the Backlash’ aims to help businesses overcome this troubling issue, and to help more organisations to stand up for what they believe in – with an effective plan of how to address any negativity online.”

Together we can take a stand, brave the backlash, and help make social a more accepting, inclusive and happy place for everyone. Click here to download the full report.