State of the Net issue 18
An overwhelming majority of Irish internet users will not pay for online content and are increasingly choosing to access free content from both traditional and new publishers, according to new research published in the State of the Net quarterly bulletin.
As some traditional publishers seek to put content behind “paywalls” in an attempt to stem the losses from their online operations, the trend is meeting with a negative response from internet users.
According to the Irish component of an international KPMG research, 88% of Irish users say that they would not pay for content, with just 2% saying that they would pay for all content.
In an analysis of how the internet is changing the media landscape, State of the Net tracks changing media habits, such as the growth in smart phones and consumer demand for media “apps”. It adds that the shift in behaviour is mirrored in the growth of digital advertising, which currently has a 10% market share but this could double within the next few years if Ireland follows the trend of other European markets.
“Advertising follows audience, and advertising budgets in Ireland are already on the move from traditional to digital media,” said Aileen O’Toole, Managing Director of online consultancy AMAS, which publishes State of the Net. “If trends across Europe are a barometer, digital advertising will soon become a fifth of total advertising spend.”
But she argues that it would be foolish to write off traditional media, particularly newspapers. International studies such as the most recent from the OECD show that newspaper circulations are in decline globally and advertising revenues are under threat. So traditional media organisations need to reinvent themselves in the digital age, with new forms of journalism, new audiences and new business models.
Other trends plotted in the current issue of State of the Net, which is published in association with the Irish Internet Association, include:
- Digital economy – Ireland now ranks in 17th place in a global scoreboard of digital economic activity, ahead of leading European economies such as Germany and France
- eCommerce – research by Google and the Internet Advertising Bureau show that Irish consumers increasingly research a wide range of products and services online, then buy them offline
- Broadband – the number of subscribers in Ireland has exceeded 1.5 million for the first time, and mobile broadband accounts for one in three broadband subscriptions
- Social media – there were 1.7 million Irish registered users on Facebook in August 2010, four times the level at the start of 2009
- Online reputations – with more and more major brands taking a battering from angry users on social media, there is a pressing need to listen, engage and interact with customers
Download issue 18 of State of the Net [PDF 1,922 kb]
Re-use graphs from the latest issue and from previous issues in Slideshare
