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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
Analyst Weblog
Sherlock sets new record for BBC iPlayer
January 06, 2012
As always over the festive season there was a feast of TV delights to keep us entertained when speaking to family members grew tiresome. With so much choice over the Christmas period we were expecting Video on Demand (VOD) to increase online as consumers caught up with their favourite programmes.
At the beginning of December we predicted the UK would spend 12 million hours on BBC iPlayer with the top draws being the Eastenders and Dr Who Christmas specials. In fact there were 13.8 million hours spent on iPlayer in December with over half a million hours spent on Boxing Day alone – the day after the Eastenders and Dr Who specials were first aired. However you can see from the graph below that iPlayer received its biggest ever day of Internet traffic on 2 January 2012.
New Year’s Day saw the much anticipated return of Benedict Cumberbatch reprising his role as Sherlock Holmes in the first episode of the second season of Sherlock. Looking at the total visits to iPlayer on 2 January there were 4.3 million visits from UK Internet users, a new record for iPlayer.
Although the official BARB figures show that Downton Abbey was the most watched programme on Christmas Day, online visits indicate that it was much less popular online. The BARB figures take into account viewings on the day as well as viewings from recordings and on catch up services like ITV+1 – which show Downton with 11.6 million viewers and Eastenders with 11.3 million for Christmas Day. However, in terms of online VOD watching, our data shows that ITV Player received just 723 thousand visits on Boxing Day, compared to iPlayer’s 4.2 million - both of which were outstripped on 2 January.
Of course, these figures include all visits for content watched on the online channels, so it is not as simple as saying Sherlock was more popular than Dr Who or indeed Downton Abbey online. However, the BBC’s online video content was certainly more watched than ITV’s and 2 January 2012 marks a new milestone for iPlayer total visits which coincides with when people were able to watch the new episode of Sherlock for the first time.
We are hosting our final Christmas webinar today at noon reviewing the Christmas season in its entirety. The webinar is free to join, you can register here or follow us on Twitter for the latest updates.
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Posted by James Murray at 08:05 AM
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In Categories BBC | Christmas | TV | Video
Travel relying less on seasonal peaks
December 23, 2011
Travel has always been a very seasonal industry online. Each year summer and winter holidays produce two clear and defined periods of online activity which we’ve been observing for years here at Hitwise.
You can see from the graph below that each year the two online peaks in traffic occur in January and July. The January peak represents bookings for winter sun and ski holidays along with some early bookings for summer holidays whilst the July peak is for last minute summer holiday bookings.
If we look at this same data in a different format we can see that the seasonal peaks in travel are slowly being eroded year-on-year. The bar chart below groups visits to the travel industry by month over the last three years.
If you look at the peak months of January, July and August, the green bar for the 2010/11 season is lower than in previous years, which means that travel is gradually accounting for less visits of overall Internet usage. However, observing the months in the run-up to these peak months: November, December, May and June the green bar is increasing year-on-year.
In essence what is happening is that the travel industry is gradually becoming less reliant on its peak months and seasonality is starting to broaden over a series of months rather than focusing on two key points in the year. If this trend continues then we will see January and July become less significant for travel traffic but more visits to travel websites come in the surrounding months. Travel brands are going to have to adapt their digital strategies to accommodate these shifting trends, with more focus on capturing customers in December, May and June especially. As always, Hitwise is here to help, and there are loads of insights we can show you from optimising your search campaigns to attracting more of your core audience to your website.
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Posted by James Murray at 11:23 AM
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In Categories Travel
Product Update: Clickstream Reliance and Departure
December 07, 2011
I mentioned in one of my last blogs that we have some exciting product developments in the pipeline here at Hitwise. Hot on the heels of the official launch of Dashboards 2.0 is the release of two new additions to the clickstream tool: click reliance and click departure.
Our clickstream data shows the user journey through the web with upstream visits (where did a user come from before visiting a website) and downstream visits (where did a user go to after visiting a website). Click reliance and click departure help to bring a more complete clickstream picture together in one easy to use report.
We’ve put together a short YouTube video tutorial on how to use the new clickstream metrics but I thought I would go through one of the examples in the blog as well to demonstrate the usefulness of this new report.
A lot of our clients are interested in Facebook and how they can engage with the UK’s largest social network to drive traffic to their website, so I’ve chosen Facebook to demonstrate click reliance in action. Looking at a highly competitive industry like online fashion retail we can see how the top retailers compare for the volume of traffic they receive from Facebook using the downstream tool.
What this shows is that of all the visits leaving Facebook, Topshop is the biggest recipient from the Apparel and Accessoreis category. What this also shows is that there are four fashion retailers closely grouped together – Topshop, ASOS, Next and New Look – which receive roughly the same amount of traffic from Facebook. But which of these retailers is most reliant on Facebook as an online channel?
By clicking on the “Metric” dropdown in the Hitwise tool you can now highlight “Clicks and Click Reliance” which will generate a new clickstream report.
This click reliance report shows how the different fashion retailers depend on traffic from Facebook. What’s interesting here is that although Next and New Look get almost exactly the same volume of traffic from Facebook, New Look is much more reliant on that traffic as a proportion of its total visits than Next. The traffic that Next receives from Facebook accounts for just over 5% of the total visits coming to Next, whereas for New Look, nearly 10% of its traffic comes directly from Facebook. What this shows is that Facebook is an important channel for Next, but not nearly as important as it is for New Look.
Click departure works in a similar way to click reliance but starts with the upstream data and then adds the downstream data to the overall view. In the example below I have started with the upstream websites visited before the Insurance category filtered by a custom category of financial aggregators.
What this example shows is that although MoneySupermarket is the biggest financial aggregator sending traffic to the insurance websites, with 1.56% of all visits to the Insurance category in October 2011 coming from MoneySupermarket. However, looking at the click departure metric we can see that MoneySupermarket sends just over 12% of its total traffic to insurance websites whereas GoCompare is much more focused on this industry with nearly 30% of all visits leaving GoCompare going straight to an insurance website.
We have more cool stuff coming in the next few months so keep tuned to the blog for the latest product updates and data insights. We're also introducing more tutorials on how to use Hitwise on our YouTube channel which is a great way to demonstrate the power of the tool.
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Posted by James Murray at 10:47 AM
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In Categories Experian | Facebook | Insurance | Video
12 Insights of Christmas
December 01, 2011
It’s December and as people crack open the first windows on their Advent calendars we thought we would make some predictions for Christmas 2011. In true festive fashion we’ve plumped for the 12 Insights of Christmas, and not a gold ring or partridge in sight.
The 12 Insights of Christmas 2011
1. This December 350 million hours will be spent shopping online by the UK Internet population. This translates to an average of 8 hours and 45 minutes spent per person on shopping websites over the course of the month.
2. 2.1 billion visits will go to online retail sites in December with new record peaks in traffic both pre and post-Christmas.
3. Lego will be the most searched for toy this Christmas, in particular Lego Star Wars games and sets.
4. Cyber Monday (5 December) will be the biggest pre-Christmas shopping day online with 85 million visits to retail websites from UK Internet users.
5. Monday 19 December will be the biggest day of December for online Grocery visits as people do some last minute food shopping but also check store opening times across the Christmas period.
6. iPhones will be a third more popular online than iPads this Christmas. If search intent was reflected in sales, for every 3 iPads Apple sold this Christmas they would sell 4 iPhones.
7. Facebook will see a new peak in UK Internet visits as friends share messages of good will with one another. 25 million hours will be spent on Facebook on Christmas Day alone.
8. Searches for the post-Christmas sales will start earlier than ever this year, with eager shoppers starting to do their research online as early as Christmas Eve.
9. Friday 23 December will be the biggest day of December for retailers receiving traffic from email as the multi-channel retailers prepare their customers for the post-Christmas sales.
10. The fashion sector will be the most reliant on Facebook traffic this Christmas, with TopShop, River Island and ASOS among the biggest recipients of Facebook traffic.
11. 12 million hours will be spent watching video clips on BBC iPlayer this Christmas with the biggest driver of traffic being the Dr Who Christmas special.
12. Hull will be the online shopping capital of Britain of December 2011, with proportionally more people doing their Christmas shopping online than any other city in the UK.
Follow Hitwise on Twitter for more data insights over the Christmas period.
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Posted by James Murray at 08:29 AM
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In Categories Christmas | Facebook | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds | Social networks | Toys
