Insights from Mary Meeker's 2017 Internet Trends Report

Each year Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker delivers a hotly anticipated Internet Trends Report.

It’s about as authoritative as these things get, and is packed with fascinating detail about the ways things are – and the way things are (possibly) going to be.

The full report is here, but as it’s some 355 slides we’ve summarised some of the key points and observations.

NB: The report has a US bias, but the trends are broadly applicable to the UK.

Time spent per adult per day on mobile devices is exploding, from 0.3 hours in 2011 ago to 3.1 hours in 2016.
Ad spend on mobile does not yet reflect the time spent on these devices (see slide above) – this is absolutely going to change at the expense of print and radio in particular.
Ad spend on print remains way out of proportion to time spent with print media – more bad news for newspapers and magazines because advertisers always follow eyeballs eventually.
Ad spend on the web finally overtook ad spend on TV.
Social media advertisers report valuing engagement above other metrics and find measuring ROI the biggest challenge (as they do with all forms of advertising).
Ab blocking is exploding in popularity, up to 16% in the UK on desktop – though we think this is lower than the actual number.
User generated content used by brands for ad purposes is 6.9% more effective than brand generated content (we have a case study in the works about exactly this).
The most important thing brands can do to improve customer service is to provide easier access to online support channels. The second most important is to offer faster agent response times.
82% of people will stop doing business with a company after a bad experience in 2016 vs 76% in 2014. Our intolerance for bad service is growing.
Real time customer interactions matter and are becoming the norm. Having chat or being available for messenger conversations is becoming expected.
There is a clear correlation between highly engaged online communities, great customer satisfaction and revenue growth (obviously!).
Fewer, simpler choices can lead to more sales.
Buy it again buttons can increase sales by 8% (!).
While traditional retail is dying (see accelerating store closures) Amazon, Warby Parker and others are opening stores with a fresh retail experience.
Private label is growing in popularity – what can be commoditised, will be commoditised.
Subscription businesses are booming – see Amazon Prime, Netflix, Wall Street Journal, Dropbox.
60 percent of America’s most highly valued tech companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants, who are responsible for 1.5 million jobs. This includes Apple, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Amazon and Facebook.