Could the brave Australian be blazing an Internet trail all of his own?
ExactTarget, a global marketing firm that maps the digital footprint, has come out with data that suggest 94% of the Australian population is hooked to the Internet and a stunning 13 million – or nearly 60% of the nation – spends 18 hours a day, or nearly all of its waking time, online.
It begs the obvious question: Is it just the Aussie or is the rest of the world on to the same thing?
Sadly, the quick answer is: we don’t know. ExactTarget has drawn a blank. When asked, the firm merely pointed Anthill to a report that showed, among other things, that in the U.K. Internet penetration was a high 84.8%, but little else that revealed if the English or, anybody else, checked Facebook before they went to bed.
The bottom line: There is little data available out there to make any meaningful comparisons with what ExactTarget has come up for Australia.
Regardless, it’s fascinating to look at some of the highlights of ExactTarget’s study, based on a survey of more than 1,400 online Australian consumers, aged 18 and older:
- Social media accounts for one out of every five minutes spent online, or a total of 3.6 hours in a day.
- Australians like Facebook a lot more than Britishers or Americans. Facebook users visit the site on average 16 times a week. The nation as a whole has 9.8 million unique visitors to Facebook each month, or about 42% of the Australian population.
- The last thing 47% of the Australian consumers do before going to bed is check email; 27% check Facebook
- 51% of the users check their Twitter feeds at least once per day, and 18% report using it throughout the day. Twitter users visit the site on average 23 times a week and Australia has 1.1 million unique visitors to Twitter each month.
“It is a fact that social media is revolutionising the way people communicate,” said Lee Hawkesly, managing director of ExactTarget Australia. “These statistics show that people are increasingly spending more time online which creates a tremendous opportunity for businesses to connect with their consumers across the channels they use most.”
With 94% of Australians on the Internet, mobile device sales outnumbered PC sales for the first time in 2011.
“Examining the online behaviour of Australia is crucial for marketers as it gives insights into consumers to deliver the right message, to the right audiences, through the right channel, at the right time. Understanding your customer is the first step in designing a marketing campaign,” said Hawkesly.
Here are some other interesting numbers:
- 13.4 million Australians are online an average of 18.8 hours a day
- South Australians spend the highest 19.9 hours a day online; Western Australians are close at 19.7 hours;
- 71% check email at the beginning of the day but only 17% check Facebook
ExactTarget says this report is the first of a two-part series. The second will closely examine “a day in the life of an online Australian including how motivations change throughout the day and how this impacts what they view online.”
The full Digital Down Under report is available upon request.
Logo credits: The logo designed for the world wide web by Robert Cailliau, a researcher at the Swiss research institute CERN. (Creative Commons licence)
