Key takeaways from KPCB partner Mary Meeker’s 196-slide report.
By Carolyn Abate (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0)
World renowned venture capitalist Mary Meeker presented her annual Internet Trends report last week and once again set the industry abuzz with her highly anticipated account on how the Internet continues to shape the world.
This year, the most significant takeaway from Meeker’s exhaustive report revealed that mobile usage now accounts for 51 percent of the total time adults spend daily on digital media. What’s more, video accounts for 55 percent of mobile traffic. Desktop usage overall remains stalled or in a decline.
The annual report provides an exhaustive retrospective on the role of technology when it comes to consumerism, education, healthcare, business and government. This year a mere 196 slides put it all into perspective.
Within the realm of mobile usage, a few key points are worth noting. Video traffic, if not the reigning content king, is on the cusp of receiving its crown. For example, Facebook logs some 4 billion video views a day, according to Forbes. That’s up four times within in the last six months. Live stream gaming video is another significant trend. Twitch, the online gaming site reported its video views jump 122 percent in the past year.
Vertical video sharing — favorite of the millennial-aged users — also saw a 29 percent increase, despite a well-publicized “say no to vertical videos” PSA back in 2012 on the dangers of not turning your device horizontally to record images.
The explosion of mobile phones users puts the rise in such viewership into perspective. In 1995, only 88 million people owned mobile phones. By 2014, that number jumped to 5.2 billion. Despite the massive audience potential, mobile advertising, while growing about 34 percent year to year, cannot keep pace with rate of mobile usage, according to the report. Meekers classifies the amount of time users spend on mobile media compared to the amount of mobile advertising spent in the same space as a $25 billion gap.
One thing is clear. User generated content is here to stay. While video sharing traffic is a part of this massive market, content sites such as the fanfiction behemoth WatttPad — where 90 percent of its 40 million users come through mobile — and the likes of SoundCloud with its tribe of 10 billion music curators, add gravitas to the staggering numbers.
Overall, the tech sector is thoroughly ingrained within the consumer sector of the economy, while government is the least saturated.
Meeker, a partner at Kliener, Perkins, Caufiled & Byer, is known as the “Queen of the Internet” and one of the world’s most powerful women. She has conducted her Internet Report is some variation for the last 20 years.
