Canada vs Australia Online Marketing Statistics & Trends 2011

Canada / Australia Online Marketing Statistics 2011 
With the confidence in our global market being restored, the social media fad transitioning into an integral part of the marketing communication, businesses and advertisers have shifted their skepticism to realise the importance of investing a greater portion of their marketing  budgets online.  


I thought it would be interesting to compare the online landscapes of Canada against Australia, countries both with a similar culture in media consumption, both early adopters of new technologies and an insatiable consumption for social media.


Key Findings

1. Total Advertising Spend P/A over Total Online Revenue = Return On Marketing
   Canada: $2.4bn / $16bn = Every $1 in Advertising Returns $6.66 in sales
   Australia: $2.3bn  / $12bn = Every $1 in Advertising Returns $5.22 in sales
2. Canadians spend almost 3 times longer online than Australians
   Canada 44.9 hours p/m Australia 18.8 p/m hours
3. Social networks in both countries account for the largest spikes in Ad impression
4. The display ad market in Canada has matured where as the display advertising in Australia is still growing

Conclusions
Australia has an online display advertising lag compared to Canada, one of the reasons is the lack of relevant local case studies and our typical skepticism to ad impressions and return on investment.


Smart phone and tablet users are rapidly growing in both markets, paving a new medium for creative and interactive mobile marketing. These devices are constantly with users, they are portable and used predominately for local search. My prediction, local search based on users GPS location will create another marketing channel.
Holistic 2011 online marketing campaigns should include the following channels & networks

• Google Advertising
• Search & Local Search Advertising 
• Image & Interactive Display Advertising 
• Online Video Advertising
• Mobile Advertising
• Facebook Advertising
• Custom Facebook interactive landing page
• Social Competition 
• Interest Based Advertising
• Games Network Advertising
• Twitter Competitions
• Youtube Advertising
• Custom Channel 
• Youtube Competition 
• Encourage Customer Generated Content 
• Group Buying Website 
• Price Comparison Website
• App Store Market Place, Android Market Place 

Of course there are many other networks we can add to this list, however the above is a minimum of what agencies should provide their clients in order to claim "Best Practice" online marketing initiatives. 


Provided below is a list of aggregated data compiled from reliables sources online including but not limited to; Comscore, Ipsos Market Research, Google Public Data, ABS, IAB Australia, AIMIA 

Canada General Online Landscape Statistics 2011

• Population: 34 million  
• Internet Users: 26 million
• Internet Users Per 100 people: 78
• Mobile Celular Subscription per 100 people: 69
• Average Canadian spends 43.5 hours a month on the Web, almost twice the worldwide average of 23.1 hours
• The number of unique online visitors in Canada hovered at about 23 million users 

Canadian Online Spend Statistics

• In 2010 consumers in Canada spent $16 billion online for products and services (including travel)
• Online Advertising spend in 2010 $2.4 billion 
• Online ads are rapidly closing on newspaper ad revenues with Internet spots representing 13% of the combined $13.8 billion total spent on all mediums.

Canadian Online Users Behaviour 2010 

• "Silver Surfers" by far the fastest-growing demographic when it comes to Web usage in Canada is the 55-and-over crowd.
• Internet explorer continues to have the largest reach with more than 93%
• Google chrome has 24% reach however users have a larger of proportion of time spent
• The split among male and female Web users in Canada is almost exactly 50-50
• Out of 10 households nationwide, or 79 per cent, are connected to the Internet
• a desktop or laptop computer is still the most popular means of logging on, accounting for 71 per cent 
• one-third use some other wireless hand held device, and one-in-five surf the web through their video game console
• The major online video viewing demographic in Canada was 18-24-year-olds
• Canadian males spent the greatest amount of time on directory websites followed by humour, incentives and movie sites   
• Women were accessing, beauty/fashion/style and health sites
• In 2010 the top two advertisers online were Procter & Gamble followed by GMAC/Ally. Together they accounted for nearly 17billion display ad impressions in 2010.

Canadian Social Network Statistics 

• Canadian adults who have heard of or visited an online social network spend an average of 6 hours per week browsing and using online social networks.
• Facebook users spend the most time online using the site per week - an average of 6hours hours - among all online social network users in Canada.
• Canadian users watch on average 47 videos watched each month 
• Canadians on average will read 16 Wikipedia pages and make 217,000 edits a month, which ranks 8th among the most productive countries in the world.
• Q4 2010 amounted to some 8 billion video views across the board. Not too shabby for a country of only around 35 million.
• Canadians, on average, watched some 267 videos in Q4 and over 20 hours per mont
• An average of 15.5 hours of video consumption per viewer per month 
• Social network has had the largest spike in ad impressions accounting for more than 58 billion impressions in Q4 2010.

Australian Online Marketing Statistics 2011

• Population: 22 million 
• Internet Users: 16 million 
• Internet Users Per 100 people: 72
• Mobile Celular Subscription per 100 people: 111
• At the end of December 2010, there were 10.4 million active internet subscribers in Australia. This represents annual growth of 16.7% and an increase of 9.9% since the end of June 2010.
• Mobile wireless (excluding mobile handset connections) was the fastest growing internet access technology in actual numbers, increasing from 2.8 million in December 2009 to 4.2 million in December 2010

Australian Online Spend Statistics 2010

• Total consumer eCommerce expenditure in the 2010 calendar year, excluding online services such online ticketing and events, travel, music downloads and financial services, is forecast to reach A$12 billion
• Australian spend 18.8 hours a month online 
• This equates to per capita expenditure of approximately A$536 per year
• It is estimated that 40 per cent of Australian online shopping expenditure is now conducted on overseas sites.
• Total online advertising expenditure for 2010 was $A2.265bn
• IAB Australia says the market is on track to reach $3bn by 2012
• Search and directories advertising took the lion’s share of spend at 50 per cent of total expenditure for the year ($1.1bn)
• Followed by display advertising at ($0.3bn)  27 per cent%
• The total ad-spend for video advertising in 2010 was $A33.4m.

Australian Online User Behaviour 2010 

• Mobile internet penetration reaches 50% as Smartphones penetration 
• reaches 35% of online Australians 
• Tablets ownership already at 8% and expected to triple this year 
• 70% accessed audio or video content online in the past 12 months 
• Males 15 - 24 spend the most time online overall
• Women 35 + were spending more time online than males 35+
• Group buying sites have grown significantly in Australia in the past year with Cudo currently taking the lead in unique visitors. 
• 92% Want to use websites to compare prices
• 76% want to use webites to access and print coupons
• 75% want to use mobile phones to find out where the nearest store is located
• 70 percent want to see what goods are in stock before going into the store 

Australian Social Network Behaviour

• The latest statistics for February 2010 by Nielsen research show that Australians spent 6.5 hours on social networks
• 3 out of 4 Australians Visited a Social Networking Site in June
• Nearly 9 million Australians visited a social networking site in June
• More than half of all web users in Australia visited Youtube
• Average time on site for Australians on YOutube is 138 minutes

Mobile/Handset Data 

• At the end of December 2010, there were 8.2 million mobile handset subscribers in Australia. This represents an increase of 21% from June 2010.
• The volume of data downloaded via mobile handsets over the three months ended 31 December 2010 was 4,029 Terabytes
•  12% of respondents used their mobile phone to buy things for their mobile phone at least once on a monthly basis, compared to 10% last year.
•  12% of respondents used their mobile phone to buy things for their mobile phone at least once on a monthly basis, compared to 10% last year.