According to a report from ad verification company Meetric, the viewability of UK ads has hit its highest level since Q2 2014.

The IAB defines ad viewability as a measurement of whether a display ad has the opportunity to be seen. So, for a desktop standard banner, the minimum threshold for viewability is 50% of the creative asset are being in view for at least one second. For a desktop video, half of the creative asset should be in view for at least for two consecutive seconds.

According to the Meetrics data, the final quarter of 2017 saw the proportion of banner ads meeting this minimum viewability criteria rose from 52% to 56%. This is the first time the proportion has risen for three consecutive quarters.

"Despite previous, albeit small, jumps, we’ve been cautious about being too positive but yet another rise, the joint biggest we’ve seen in consecutive quarters, suggests the battle is being won,” said Philipp von Hilgers, Meetrics’ CEO and co-founder.

“The jump is particularly impressive as in most markets viewability drops in the final quarter due to higher activity – driven by Christmas – which leads to lower quality placements resulting in lower viewability, so the UK has done very well to override this trend.”

Middle of the table

The UK traditionally lags pretty far behind its Western European peers that Meetircs measures. But the newest data puts it ahead of Switzerland (48%), Poland (50%) and Germany (55%).

In terms of the proportion of ads that meet the IAB’s minimum viewability criteria, the best performing country is Austria (67%), followed by Italy (63%), France (62%) and Sweden (61%).

While the IAB minimum criteria says that a 50% of an ad should be viewed for at least one second, the average time a UK ad was in view (but not necessarily viewed) rose by 15% to 24.3 seconds.

- by Colm Hebblethwaite

Mobile network giffgaff has released research estimating that average mobile data usage will climb to a mammoth 93 GB per month by 2025.

With 5G due to launch globally in 2020, giffgaff has based its estimations on theoretical speed increases. Research and advisory company Gartner believes 5G phones will begin to reach the market in 2019, when rollouts of 5G networks will start in select countries, such as the US and South Korea.

"We predict that, by 2021, 9 per cent of smartphones sold will support 5G," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.

“Overall, 5G will be a significant driver of video and streaming services, as it will bring faster uplinks and support new AI applications.”

Giffgaff have previously estimated that global mobile data usage will grow by 720% by 2021.

4K streaming

The research shows that the largest proportion of the increased data usage will be down to video streaming. Users consumed an average of 0.83 GB worth of their total data on video streaming in 2017, with this expected to rise to 24.7 GB in 2021.

Streaming 4K will be available to most mobile users in 2025, and giffgaff are predicting that this will send the proportion of mobile data used to stream video soaring to 73.87 GB.

Messaging is also likely to see a big increase in data usage. It consumed 0.46 GB’s worth of user’s total data in 2017, but this could grow to as much as 40.63 GB in the first half of the next decade.

“For millions of people, using a mobile phone for music and video streaming is more important than its traditional use for calls and texts,” Chief Commercial Officer at giffgaff, Kim Faura, commented. “With the launch of 5G, we will finally have the bandwidth to deliver speeds even faster than home broadband.

“Consumers need to bear this in mind when signing up for a two-year contract; 5G will be here in two years and many users will want a phone that will let them enjoy all 5G has to offer.”

- by Colm Hebblethwaite

The UK data market value will hit £1.1 billion ($1.58 billion) in 2018, making it the second largest data market in the world and the biggest in Europe.

The figures come from OnAudience.com, which is part of the Cloud Technologies group who are one of the largest data warehouses in the world, and show a pretty rapid expansion in the UK market. In 2016, the estimated value of the UK data market was £0.7 billion, increasing by 26% to hit £0.9 billion the following year.

The company is predicting further double-digit growth of 22% this year to tip the market value over the one billion mark. The research also shows big growth in the global data market size, growing 34% from $13.5 billion in 2017 to an estimated $18.2 billion in 2018.

“Data has become the currency of 21st century. On the data market, there is a significant upward trend that we can notice at least since 2016. We can say that the need for data is growing simultaneously with the rate of digitalisation,” commented Maciej Sawa, Chief Commercial Officer at OnAudience.com, Cloud Technologies capital group.

“In highly developed countries, such as the UK or the US, there is a big awareness of benefits from the processing and monetizing of data. This is why firms are more likely to buy and sell data – they are aware of profits generated thanks to the information collected.”

Data driven

The global data market is currently highly-concentrated, with 90% of global data spend coming from 28 markets. The marketing industry is the main driver of data market growth, with its seemingly insatiable appetite for consumer data over the last few years.

Information about demographics, user interests and purchase intentions are now considered essential knowledge for marketers to have if they are to properly tailor their ad campaigns. The digitalisation of companies is another key driver of the growth in the data market, with many firms changing their model to be more data driven.

”Organisations of all sizes and representing all industries start to look for revenue in data streams, flowing constantly into their systems. Harnessing information and turning it into more insights, better informed decisions and more customer engagement scenarios are among key topics discussed with our customers nowadays,” said Tomasz Pelczarski, Business Solution Professional at Enterprise Group, Microsoft.

“Artificial intelligence has a key role in analysing and processing information. Since each organisation is unique, they need to find their own way to make the most of AI systems.”

- by Colm Hebblethwaite