Tuesday 19 December 2017

Sony has sold more than 2m Playstation VR headsets

"Sony released some new stats today detailing the progression of sales for its PS4 console and PS VR headset systems. The numbers that matter: 70.6 million PS4 consoles, 617.8 million PS4 titles, 2 million PS VR headsets and 12.2 million PS VR titles.
Things appear to be moving along rather well in console-land, where Sony is almost certainly winning the console wars with Microsoft. Microsoft hasn’t released unit sales numbers since January of this year, when it announced that 26 million Xbox One units had been sold. In that time, Microsoft has released an updated version of the system, the 4K-playing Xbox One X. Sony released the souped-up PS4 Pro last year.
Meanwhile, Sony has also made significant inroads on sales of its VR headsets. The company announced in June that the company had sold 1 million headsets. The headset has been given a sort of price drop through the inclusion of a camera that had previously been an additional purchase."

There were over 17bn live video chats on Messenger in 2017

"Overall, there were 17 billion realtime video chats on Messenger, marking two times as many video chat sessions in 2017 compared to 2016."
Source:  Facebook, 13th December 2017

The videos that get the most engagement on Facebook are food videos



Source:  Buzzsumo blog, 23rd August 2017

Unilever & Nestle get a return of £2 for every £1 spend on digital display ads in the UK

"On average, for every £1 Unilever and NestlĂ© spend on display ads in the UK both brands return almost double in sales, according to data from the Internet Advertising Bureaux (IAB UK).
The figures come as a year of FMCG digital efficiency drives and agency reviews draws to a close, with the IAB claiming that every £1 spent on digital display units yields a typical ROI of £1.94 across all major British supermarkets.
The study tracked the programmatic display advertising of nine consumer goods brands including Persil, Magnum, Tropicana, PG Tips and Nescafe across a number of premium sites like the Guardian, Mail Online, Yahoo and Gumtree.
Though it didn’t specify the breakdowns for individual brand ROI, it noted that one brand it monitored saw a £3.38 ROI for every £1 it invested.
The research was completed over a year-long period, comparing display spend with short-term sales numbers gleaned from i2c – a joint venture between Sainsbury’s and Nectar card owner Aimia – and Nielsen’s Homescan data. The resulting data, which was commissioned by i2c and the IAB gives an insight into the shopping behaviour at all major UK supermarkets."

79% of web sites track visitors - & 10% send data back to 10 or more companies

"A new study from Ghostery, an anti-tracking tool, shows that an overwhelming majority (79%) of websites globally are tracking visitors' data — with 10% of these sites actually sending user data to 10 companies or more."
Source:  Data from Ghostery, reported by Axios, 12th December 2017

A six year old is making an estimated $11m a year as a toy reviewer on YouTube

"Ryan, the 6-year-old "host" of Ryan ToysReview, a popular toy-review channel on YouTube, is also reportedly a multi-millionaire.
A family-run YouTube channel, Ryan ToysReview generated around $11 million in pre-tax income in 2017, according to Forbes' annual list of the highest-earning YouTube celebrities.
The raw estimate of $11 million tied Ryan ToysReview with the YouTube comedy stalwart Smosh for eighth place on the Forbes list."
Source:  The Independent, 10th December 2017

Publishers are losing millions of dollars a day due to fraudulent inventory

"A new study has found massive volumes of counterfeit inventory across global display and video exchanges. The study, which was conducted by a partnership of 16 leading programmatic publishers across 26 domains, found that the record levels of fraud were resulting in lost revenues of up to $1.27bn per year.
With the participation of DSPs including Amobee, Quantcast and Google, the publishers examined the total available inventory across all exchanges for the 26 domains, and found video callouts were overstated by as much as 57 times the available inventory, representing around 700m counterfeit callouts per day. For display advertising, inventory was overstated by four times, with daily counterfeit callouts in the billions.
The publishers involved included Business Insider, The LA Times, Mail Online, The New York Times, Turner, USA Today, The Washington Post and Watson Advertising. In an effort to combat such high levels of fraud, the firms have thrown their support behind the IAB’s Ads.txt initiative, which aims to provide a standard way of authorising inventory.
“The results of this study confirm that Ads.txt needs to be adopted as rapidly as possible to cut off the flow of counterfeit website inventory,” said Dennis Buchheim, senior vice president and general manager at IAB Tech Lab. “It is critical that the industry comes together to put a stop to criminal activity and secure the health of the supply chain.”
Counterfeit impressions are created when a bad seller replaces the URL of a low quality site with a premium publisher URL, or a fraudster creates fake impressions and labels them with a high quality publisher’s URK. This fake inventory is then sold on multiple exchanges and SSPs, without the knowledge of the publishers they are impersonating, to trick advertisers into thinking they are buying premium inventory. The process robs premium publishers of revenues, and tricks advertisers into buying mislabelled and potentially unsafe inventory."

Tuesday 5 December 2017

Starbucks' loyaltry programme has 13.2m members in the US

"Mobile payments accounted for 30 percent of transactions in U.S. stores during the company’s third quarter, which was up from 29 percent in the previous quarter and 27 percent in Q1.
Starbucks’ Rewards program grew by 11 percent from last year; there are now 13.3 million active members in the U.S. that account for 36 percent of U.S. company-operated store sales. However, membership has remained stagnant at 13.3 million since April, when Starbucks reported its Q2 earnings. That’s also when Starbucks tweaked the program to reward customers based on money they spend rather than how often they visit."

NatGeo's Safari Live had 220m views on Facebook in 3 months

"From August 3 to October 31, 2017, National Geographic's Safari Live garnered 220 million total views on Facebook Watch, 187,000 shares, likes and comments and 8.3 million video views, according to data from the publisher made available to Marketing Dive. The show saw rapid follower growth, adding 7,500 followers in August, 52,000 followers in September for a month-to-month increase of 583% and 65,000 fans in October, representing another 25% gain.
Nat Geo launched Safari Live in 2015 as an interactive way for digital viewers to experience an actual safari. It had been broadcast live on YouTube twice daily before Facebook asked the brand to join the alpha launch of Facebook Watch, with its first broadcast on August 2."

Mobile had its first $2bn day in the US on Cyber Monday 2017

"Mobile had its first-ever $2bn shopping day in the US on Cyber Monday, helping drive online sales to its largest total in history of $6.59bn for the day.
According to Adobe estimates, smartphones alone accounted for $1.59bn of revenue on the day, representing an all-time high year-on-year (YoY) growth of 39.2 per cent. Smartphone traffic also saw growth of 22.2 per cent, helping overall web traffic to retail sites to increase by 11.9 per cent.
Overall mobile devices represented 47.4 per cent of retail site visits – 39.9 per cent smartphones, 7.6 per cent tablets – and 33.1 per cent of revenue – 24.1 per cent smartphone, nine per cent tablets. Mobile transactions were 12 per cent higher in value on average than Cyber Monday 2016."
Note - so $1.6bn for mobile, and $0.6bn for tablets
Plus - Black Friday stats here
Plus - Data on in-store footfall here

30,000 organisations use Facebook's Workplace network

"Workplace by Facebook, which started with browser and mobile-only applications but since October is available as a desktop app, is the first major Facebook product to be built outside the United States, primarily in London, where Mr Codorniou is based.
Its value proposition is different to other enterprise apps, he says, because it aims to “connect everyone in the company, from the chief executive to employees on the front line, to people who work in different offices, in different time zones, speaking different languages”.
The company already has 30,000 organisations, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Starbucks, using the platform – more than double from six months ago. Mr Codorniou was even surprised to find 15 women working in a London nail salon using it."
Source:  Raconteur, 30th November 2017

Waymo's autonomous vehicles have driven 4 million miles

"Waymo continues to press its lead in terms of actual miles driven on roads, which is potentially the most important metric out there when it comes to building successful autonomous driving technology. The Alphabet-owned company that began life as Google’s self-driving car project around a decade ago now has 4 million miles driven autonomously on roads.
That 4 million miles represents the self-driving effort of Waymo’s entire test fleet, covering its original autonomous vehicles all the way up to its current driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which are actually now testing on Arizona public roads, right alongside everyday human drivers, with no safety driver behind the wheel at all.
Waymo puts the milestone in perspective by noting that it would take a human around 300 years to drive that many miles, if they were driving at the average rate of a person in the U.S. today. Plus, the pace of Waymo’s accumulation of distance driven is ramping up: It managed to gain 1 million miles between just May and November of this year — it took the company six years to rack up its first million, by comparison."
Source:  Techcrunch, 27th November 2017

28% of ten year olds in the UK have a social media profile

"Half of children aged 11 and 12 have a social media profile, despite most platforms' minimum age being 13, a study from regulator Ofcom suggests.
Children's charity the NSPCC called on the government to act on the issue of under-age profiles.
The media watchdog also said children were increasingly getting their news from social media, but most were aware of the concept of fake news.
Just 32% believed that news accessed on such platforms was reported truthfully.
Ofcom's Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes report found that 46% of 11-year-olds, 51% of 12-year-olds and 28% of 10-year-olds now have a social media profile.
Parental awareness of the age limit was low - with about eight in 10 of those parents whose children use Instagram or Snapchat unaware of the restrictions."
Source:  BBC News, taking data from Ofcom, 29th November 2017

People have spent $1.3m buying virtual cats in the CryptoKitties game

"Launched a few days ago, CryptoKitties is essentially like an digital version of Pokemon cards but based on the Ethereum blockchain. And like most viral sensations that catch on in the tech world, it’s blowing up fast.
Built by Vancouver and San Francisco-based design studio AxiomZen, the game is the latest fad in the world of cryptocurrency and probably soon tech in general.
People are spending a crazy amount of real money on the game. So far about $1.3M has been transacted, with multiple kittens selling for ~50 ETH (around $23,000) and the “genesis” kitten being sold for a record ~246 ETH (around $113,000). This third party site tracks the largest purchases made to date on the game. And like any good viral sensation prices are rising and fluctuating fast. Right now it will cost you about .03 ETH, or $12 to buy the least expensive kitten in the game."