1. Net usage reaches mass adoption tipping point

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Aileen O'Toole, Managing Director, AMAS

The Internet tipping point is in sight – the time when usage levels reach critical mass and trigger significant change. A crop of new research shows that Ireland’s online population, fuelled by the accelerated uptake of broadband, is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

The result is profound changes in consumer behaviour. It means many Irish businesses and government bodies will have to reorient how they communicate and market their products and services.

There’s no shortage of new internet research published so far in 2008, in stark contrast to two years ago, when State of the Net was launched. Ireland now has close to 900,000 broadband subscribers and could pass the million barrier this year. Two-thirds of Irish households now have a home PC, over 80% of which are internet-enabled.

Businesses are conducting fullscale electronic case handling with government bodies, are using the mobile internet in increasing numbers and are taking a shine to Skype. Bebo, the leading social networking site, counts its Irish audiences in the millions, not thousands. For many consumers, a Google search has become the default for everything from getting a phone number to booking a holiday.

From the Cinderella in the marketing budget, online has become the princess in the world’s biggest economies. Witness the UK, where online advertising budgets are forging ahead – and are two years beyond that critical tipping point.

Online advertising stood at £2.8bn in 2007, a 106% increase in just two years. It commands a 15.3% market share of advertising spend, overtaking old media stalwarts like radio and regional newspapers. As a category, online advertising (display, search, classifieds, email) is in third place behind press at 19.9% and TV at 21.8%. But the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK is predicting further growth and that online will overtake TV by 2010.

The tipping point is nigh. Research, such as the newly published study from Joint National Internet Research (JNIR), will allow marketing professionals and media buyers to plan more online campaigns with confidence. Communicating and marketing to the online generation present huge challenges for those charged with managing marketing budgets.

But the upside is enormous – online can help stretch marketing budgets in these toughened times and give rich, reliable returnon- investment metrics that put many competing media categories in the shade.

Back to contents of State of the Net issue 9