It's that time again, a deepdive into social in 2021
Roundabout Social media marketing
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It’s that time of the year…..Numbers , numbers and numbers from 2021.
Starting with a thank you to @simon kemp and the Kepios team for all the data from the "Global Digital report 2021”
So let’s take a deepdive from the immense 300 pages report into the numbers that matter to the Social media marketing crowd.
First of all, growth in Social Media Marketing in 2021 is magical again!
More internet users, more social media users, more time spend on social.
Crazy numbers don’t you think?
What also keeps on?surprising me is the number of platforms per users. Almost 7,5 platforms on average per user on a global scale.
If we take a closer look, we see that African countries are among the heavy users , for example in Nigeria and Ghana users spend twice as much time on social than average
Social overview
An interesting comparison in my opinion is the "cross platform audience'. I noticed that 50% of Snap users also use Pinterest. This is interesting because most of the Snap audience is young and most of the Pinterest audience is female,
So you want to reach young women, combine Snap and Pinterest
Staying with young women, 25,6% of the Female audience ranks Instagram as their favorite channel.
Time spend on Instagram reaches into 11 hours a month, compared to snap , just 3 hours a month. In comparison, TikTok and Facebook both get even more, up to 19,6 hours a month for both of them.
If we look at how brands are researched on social we notice that by now 43,5% of internet users use social media for brand research.
A closer look teaches us that in African and Asian countries this is even more, above 50% of internet users turn to social to check our companies and brands. So you better perform on your social channels.....
Another closer look states that my home country ( the Netherlands) is in the low parts of the statistics with only 21,4% using Social media for checking out brands
That's a bit unexpected to be honest…..
When we look at demographics, the age group 16-24 mainly uses social for Brand checking.
Another take away for brands is that 21,5% of the internet users follows a brand not “after” buying, but in the phase of “considering to buy”
So get those followers and fans in early!
Influencers
Influencers should be the ones with followers, fans and high engagement. The truth however is slightly less bright from a statistic point of view. Only 22,5% of internet users actually follow influencers.
And again, something weird and unexpected, The Netherlands dangles low at the bottom of the list, with only 14,6% of users following influencers.
Maybe everyone in the Netherlands thinks they are an influencer themselves? ??
So let's take a look at the channels , one by one…
All data I show here is from the perspective of an advertiser…..
Starting with the #1 giant , formerly known as Facebook and now short and simple….#Meta
Ok, let's start with the amazing number of monthly active users, this grew to 2,89 billion. On its way for 3 billion by end of the summer.
If you are an advertiser, you should consider men in the age of 25-34 to sell your stuff. By far the largest advertising audience with 18,4% of reach. However in comparison to ad-clicks, this group is not very likely to click on your ad. Most likely to click are women from 45-65.
Keep in mind that if you still were spending loads of money on your design team to “also” design your ad content for desktop…..better reconsider. At this moment 98,5% of all users are looking at your content on their mobile
Instagram’s ad reach grew with 21,5%. So we can advertise 21,5% more people on Insta now……where FB only grew 6,5%
Who do we target on Insta?
Male 18-24 &?25-34 are the largest ad-group, both accounting for 16,4%
If we dive into the “where” to target your ads. An unusual and unexpected country comes into the #1 position
Turkey : 76% of Turkish internet users can be reached through your Insta ads, The average is only 23,9%. A triple factor for Turkey
In 2022 it’s possible to reach out to 230 million people in India, only 21% of its population, but already crazy numbers. Within the next few years this will grow to 500 million+ users
When we look closer into engagement numbers, the average engagement rate for Instagram was 1,94% last year.
The most followed person is still Ronaldo with over 394 million followers…Holy s%$t
To make it a bit visual, the whole population of the USA is following Ronaldo added with pretty much all of UK.
Ronaldo’s engagement rate is almost 3%. Very impressive.
The largest brand on Insta is National Geographic with 201 million followers and Nike coming up second with 191 million
The hashtag #love is used more than 2 billion times last year.
#Nature stepped into the top 10 and pushed #happy out of the top10
So are we less happy on Insta and more into nature now?
TikTok
If you want to reach the best audience on TikTok there’s a superior group for that, women 18-24 are on the top of the list with a reach potential of 25%
In the UK users spend enormous amounts of time on TikTok scrolling in the subways for 27,3 hours a month on average
The most followed account is not a soccer player on TikTok, but Charli d'Amelio, a former professional dancer with over 135 million followers
Her post from 4 days ago ( January 30) got 55 million views…..
There are no brands representing the top 10 on TikTok most followed
The most used hashtag on TikTok was #FYP ( For You Page)
Linkedin?
Linkedin keeps on growing, such a niche ( business perspective and not consumers), but they are battling with all mainstream socials in number of users.
Growth in 2021 rose to 808 million users.
The best audience to target are men from 25-34 with over 34,2% of total share
India is doing an amazing job in user numbers on Linkedin as well….with over 83 million already with a Linkedin Profile, only 8,6% of total population.
Imagine how strong India will be represented in a few years when numbers hit 100-200 million users.
China is also growing…….already 60 million professionals (5,2% of population)
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On Linkedin , Google is the most followed company with 23+ million followers. Amazon is strong contender coming in 2nd with a few followers less ( also 23 million and some)…….The battle between the giants continue on Linkedin as well
If we look into people with followers , Bill Gates is leading the dance with over 35 million followers. So Bill is bigger than Google…..finally he beats them
Again India plays a big role , this time in “followed hashtags” , over 67 million people follow the tag #india
Our little industry called social media also keeps growing in Hashtag followers, already 19 million
Snapchat
Snap grows to over the 300 million DAU.
On average almost 9% of population can be reached with Snap ads , in countries like Sweden , Denmark and also the Netherlands, this is 40%+,
Again in India numbers are thrilling already, with only 11% of population , over 125 million users can be reached
There are two age groups to reach out for with your ads on Snap , both representing 19,5% of users , Men en Women 18-24 are the ones to aim for!
On reachable ad audience, nothing to report. It pretty much stayed the same.
However, as I keep on mentioning pretty much every chance I get, don’t forget or underestimate Twitter for ads. Cheapest in cpc to start with
In the top countries, 25% or more of population can be reached through twitter ads.
On average over the world , this is much much lower, only 7,7%
So the twitter game is played in a bunch of countries. If you are active in USA, UK. Japan or Brasil, consider Twitter.
And not very surprising, the new #3 in the world in reach is now India. Only 1,6% of population already giving a reach of 17,5 million twitter users?￥
Barrack Obama is the most followed person with over 130 million followers.
Youtube / CNN are the most followed brands/non-persons with? 73 million? & 61 million
One of my favorite channels……still growing
12,4% YoY on ad audience
The best age group in the women group is 25-34 years old, representing 29,1% of audiences
One of the takeaways in audience groups is the age group 18-24.
Against all the power of TikTok and Instagram, women in this age are great to reach on Pinterest (16,4% of total audience)
So , going for the younger women audience, take a look aside from TikTok and Instagram and hit the play button in Pinterest for your ads.
E-commerce
So much of social media advertising is linked to e-commerce now, it’s time to take that in my findings from now on.
Big numbers here,
Asian countries are up, above and beyond in their online shopping behaviour, over 64% bought something online last week
What makes you and me buy online?
free delivery is seen as the biggest “yes” for making the purchase. So realize that “charging for delivery” is the BIG NO on the other side of the medal.
The Food & beverages industry created the largest growth with 35% YOY growth. Electronics is the largest group and counting into the 1 billion in revenue
The average growth for all groups is set at 20% growth , and even as interesting , 18% higher spend per purchase
(Groups : Fashion, electronics, furniture, toys/hobby’s, personal/household, food, beverages, physical media)
Digital marketing
Some interesting facts for getting ready to advertise and grow
The age group 16-24 prefers social above using search engines.
The older the age group, the more search engines are the key source for finding brands
On average 17% feels represented in ads. This is very low, 63% thinks that ads are not “Meant” for them…
Take away : Content is still to widely created for “All” age groups and demographics/geographics instead of more “personalized” per group of people.
Every year for the last 5 years I try to predict the growth of the industry by “Dollars spend on social ads” ( with some success)
So , last year revenue overall for all social channels rose to $ 154 billion. Again an impressive 17,5% growth rate YOY
By now, Social represents a large portion of 33% of total digital ad spend
Growth will not slow down when I look in my magic ball…..??
2022 will be around 175 billion, in 18 months this will hit 200 billion.
Facebook will still grow, but most of the growth will be coming from Linkedin, Pinterest and TikTok.
TikTok and Linkedin will be able to grow with a rate of 30-35% YoY
If we look at the two largest digital channels, search and social, we can compare some of the stats to see the difference
Click prices vary a lot, from Twitter being the cheapest at a level of 0,38 ct to $5,26 on Linkedin.
Facebook /Insta / Pinterest depending on campaign objective between $0,80 and $2,00
In the last quarter the CPM prices are always higher due to the Holiday season, this last quarter the CPM price rose to $9,13.?
This is almost 22% higher than the same quarter in 2020.
Digital ad spend crossed the 50/50 marker compared to offline some years ago, but didn’t stop there, digital is now 67% from total ad spend?
Within the digital ad spend, the Meta group now takes 23,7% of digital ad spend.
Closing words:
I just love our amazing industry, I am hooked for some years now and will be for the next years to come.
I love to hear your opinion about our industry,
If you have any updates and insights , please let us all know.
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