• …the global communications market is worth £876 billion? • …there were 88 million new mobile subscriptions added in China last year? • …the average American spent 15 hours online each week in 2007? • …the internet made up 19% of total adspend in the UK last year? • …people in Poland listen to nearly 5 hours of radio every day? • …in Ireland, each person sends an average of 154 texts per month? • …37% of Italian households do not have a fixed line
These facts came out at a breakfast briefing today organised by Bite Communications in a presentation by Steve Gettings and Sam Carter from Ofcom on its annual research on international communications. What it proved beyond doubt is the phenomenal speed and uptake of communications change and how different nationalities use, or rather embrace, different communications platforms.
Here are some nuggets from this remarkable piece of research where the speed of growth of mobile communications in particular is just staggering:
· There has been dramatic growth in mobile connections in developing countries. China added 88 million connections in the 12 months of the research study, followed by India with 84 million new connections.
· The Italians love their mobile phone with the highest take up in the 7 markets studied.
· Everyone loves texting but especially in Poland! The market is showing enormous growth, led by Poland with a fantastic 90% growth rate. People in the Republic of Ireland send the most texts – an average of 154 texts each month!
· The Americans love the web! The US spends most time on line: an average of 15.2 hours a week, compared to the UK (14 hours); France (13.2 hours), Italy (8.7 hours) and Spain (7.5 hours).
· The favourite web brand is Google in all markets surveyed except Japan where the no. 1 is Yahoo!
· For the first time, advertising no longer makes up the majority of global TV revenue…being overtaken as a revenue source by a combination of subscriptions and public funding.
· There are now clear signs that internet is taking a growing share of adspend in many countries, led at the moment by the UK, followed by Sweden and then the US
A slide presentation of the research findings is available at http://www.slideshare.net/comment.ofcom/international-communications-market-2008-presentation
With so much change, it sets me thinking – will 2009 be remembered as the Year of ROI? The year when the expectation was clearly established by the economic climate for agencies to prove their value. In other words, it will be the year when smart PR agencies demonstrate a multi channel approach, prove their understanding and the client’s need for a digital strategy and are able to prove the value of the work through measurement and evaluation? I think this could happen, which is why the winners will be PR companies which have a deep understanding of rapidly changing consumer communications behaviour.
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