High on an online plateau
It’s early days yet but indications are that internet usage in Australia may have reached something of a plateau.
The latest Nielsen Australian Online Landscape Review for December 2010 shows that 14,330,878 Australians were active online during the month, an increase of just 1 per cent on December 2009. The time spent per person was just over forty hours and 20 minutes, once again a small increase of 3 per cent on the previous year.
Nielsen data for the past three years shows a remarkably similar story. From January 2008 until June 2009 the active online usage hovered on or around the 12 million users each month. July 2009 saw a change in methodology and a spike in usage to just over 14 million, and that’s remained pretty steady ever since.
Likewise the time spent per month. In March 2008 it was just over 20 hours, creeping to tick over 24 hours in June 2009. The methodology change almost doubled that figure to around 40.5 hours in July 2009 and despite peaks (43 hours) and troughs (35 hours) the graph has remained fairly constant.
Last December the heaviest traffic was between 4-5pm, which was a slight spike in a heavy block of usage between 3-6pm. This may reflect the kids getting home from school and/or office boredom.
Wednesday and Thursday, with 78 per cent of the online community active, were the busiest days, followed by Friday (77%), Monday (75%) and Tuesday (73%). Saturday (70%) and Sunday (69%) prove that weekends remain days of comparative rest.
Any thoughts that the internet is a predominantly male domain are dispelled by the 49.2 per cent female and 50.8 per cent male split, with female users dominating in the 18-34 age group (1,762,000 males to 1,975,000 females).
The top 15 sites throw up few surprises, with Google, NineMSN, Facebook, Microsoft and YouTube filling the top five spots. The one brand to make a big move was the department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts – the only government department in the top 15 – which came in 14th with a unique audience for the month of 3,889,000, an 9.1% increase on the previous month’s visitors. I suspect that’s a result of interest in the Murray Darling Basin decision which came out in December rather than a sudden upsurge of interest in arts or heritage.
So what does it all mean? Nothing earth-shattering, but after the exponential growth of online usage over the past 15 years it does indicate a maturing of the online space. And it’s a maturing at a very high level – it might be a plateau, but it is a pretty substantial plateau: 14.3 million active online in December is a huge number, as is the 40 hour/month average usage time.
It’s the future, but it’s also now.