statistics

Banner adverts are an ineffective way to drive traffic or boost online PR for a brand, it is reported by digital marketing agency TAN Media.

The banner ad is so unappealing that it “has become a symbol of all that’s wrong with online advertising”, according to Brian Morrissey in a post for Digiday.com.

Typically it is said to be lacking in creativity, intrusive and ignored by the overwhelming majority of web users.

2012 has been an exceptional year for web video, with Psy's taking the world by storm and Felix Baumgartner's huge leap from space.

With record-breaking numbers of viewers watching content online, video has also played a massive part in the growth of companies globally.

Just take a look at YouTube's statistics to see how mind boggling the 'video revolution' has become, for example: 500 years of YouTube videos are watched every day on Facebook. Crazy!

We've pulled together a few interesting statistics from the past 12 months to sum up how web video has also been impacting on businesses.

At the recent Youth Marketing Strategy summit in London (Chinwag was a media partner - thanks Chinwag) I previewed some interesting new findings from our newly-published Youth Insight Report. These findings were based on research in April and May looking at the aspirations, attitudes and habits of UK 16-24s. We received around 1,700 responses to our survey.

These insights were broad, so here for the benefit of digital-biased marketers I've pulled out six fresh stats that relate only to digital...

Facebook: from the bedroom of an Ivy League colleague to a Silicon Valley powerhouse. It's an all-American startup dream, but one that the Brits have taken to heart and then some.

This new infographic from BLiNQ Media, who have recently opened an office in London, shows Facebook penetration in the UK (49%) leads the US (48%). OK, so obsessed might be going a bit far, but safe to say, we're fans despite any privacy concerns.

Whilst luxury brand tops the chart in the UK, it's Starbucks in the US, the other 4 top brands are all confectioners: Skittles, Cadbury Creme Egg, Cadbury Wispa and Maltesers.

Chinwag's Sam Michel recently wrote about survey results claiming early adopters were growing weary of social media and when we spotted similar results in the recent wave of results from GlobalWebIndex from our friends at Trendstream, we asked for more detail.

And they didn't disappoint, here's a round-up of the five key trends from the 5th wave of their research. This analysis of key changes in behaviour is based on interviews with early 100,000 individuals in 27 key internet markets (full presentation is embedded below).

Maybe it's the over-developed thumbs of the smartphone natives? Maybe the news doesn't have the draw that it used to. Either way, it's games that dominate app purchases in the US according to the latest Neilsen research.

NMA reports that of the 300,000 users surveyed in May, 93% bought mobile games, compared with 76% paid for apps with a news flavour. Surprisingly, bearing in mind thse figures relate to a US audience, the second most popular category of downloads was weather. I thought it was just us Brits who were obsessed.

The statistics reveal the top 10 categories of apps downloaded in the last 30 days are:

Here at Chinwag, we like a tasty infographic and this one is a doozy. Built from data collected around the time of the national census, our friend Simon Sanders from Lansons recently published it on their blog.

That's equivalent to the UK's entire working population (~29.3m in 2009 - is this rising/falling - discuss) using social media with a few more people to spare.

They're pretty much ubiquitous already, but do you remember way back when, to April, when Facebook Like buttons were launched? When Zuck hit London in June, the company announced 350,000 sites were using the buttons, with over 1bn impressions served daily.

So the volumes are enormous, but what's the impact for publishers? Facebook's Director of Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky recently released a presentation that shared some juicy tidbits from major publishers (see below for full presentation).

The latest offering from the big G will whet the appetites of marketers, analysts and stats head alike.

Google Internet Stats is a UK-only initiative that aggregates stats from 52 advertising and marketing sources that are 'carefully selected and reputable' according to a post on the Google Barometer blog.

Using a simplified GReader-style interface, the headline data is easily browsable and searchable (this is Google, after all) in five different categories:

• Technology
• Macro Economic Trends
• Media Landscape
• Media Consumption
• Consumer Trends