16 Slides from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report Political Strategists Need to See
Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report is a must-read for Silicon Valley insiders and others interested in the future of technology, marketing, software, hardware, and their impacts on society. The slide deck is 213 pages long and Meeker, a partner at a top venture capital firm, gave a quick, 24 minute overview you can watch here.
I’ve gone through all 213 slides to identify the key slides everyone in politics needs to see.
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Here are 16 slides from the presentation that everyone in politics needs to see:
The Future of Advertising: Mobile + Video
Overall, internet advertising has reached parity with time spent, but dollars spent on mobile advertising is lagging behind the time Americans are spending on mobile.
Campaigns and other organizations should ensure that their advertising is commensurate with time spent on various platforms. Time spent watching TV is decreasing, time spent on Internet is holding steady, and fully a quarter of time spent consuming media is on mobile.
Facebook, Twitter and Google all offer advertising options for targeting your voters on their mobile platforms. Advertising creative, landing pages, and copy all need to be created with mobile in mind. If you’re currently lumping your online campaign with these mobile platforms, it’s time to break them out.
A couple of really eye opening stats here. As I highlighted in a previous email, the vast majority of users are watching videos without sound. More alarming is the interest in and adoption of ad blocking software on desktop and mobile.
The advice about making your video ads work is critical to internalize and is worth building a checklist for your video campaigns based on these 8 tips.
In this slide, we see just how quickly ad blocking software is being adopted, particularly on mobile. Don’t be surprised when browsers and device manufacturers start incorporating ad blocking natively into their software.
The rise in ad blocking software usage is forcing publishers to be more creative about how they earn revenue and in turn, expect more advertisers — including political advertisers — to look at increased usage of native advertising, like sponsored content, to reach voters blocking online ads.
Effective video advertising must be authentic, entertaining, brief, and in context. Thanks to Snapchat, vertical video is becoming a more common format. It’s no longer enough to extend TV ads onto platforms like Snapchat.
Internet users are increasingly served with hyper-targeted marketing that is personalized to their interests. Political advertisers should continue to focus on personalizing their creatives to the target audiences to stand out amongst an increasingly crowded space.
Social Media & the Dominance of Video
Among online 18–34 year olds, Facebook has 100% reach, but most surprising is the shocking 16+ hours spent on average each month per visitor. Now that Millennials have caught up to baby boomers as a share of the electorate, political strategists need to focus their attention on the platforms where the voters are — social media.
The evolution of video has now arrived at “real-live” experiences. This will mean additional challenges for political advertisers trying to reach voters on traditional TV, while more voters are watching live and semi-live personal videos.
Over 10 billion videos are viewed every day on Snapchat and over 8 billion on Facebook — the key here is that these are user-generated videos. It’s difficult to interrupt this media with typical advertising formats and strategies.
Messaging Apps, the Future of Communication
Usage of messaging apps like Facebook and WhatsApp are growing rapidly.
Users are now interacting with companies via messaging platforms and this will continue to grow as a customer service channel. Artificial intelligence (AI) enabled chatbots will facilitate this growth.
This is an eye-opening stat for anyone concerned with voter contact. Now that Millennials (aka Generation Y) make up the largest voting group in the US, their preferred contact channels are internet or web chat and social media. Telephone is dead last — their 5th choice. This is in stark contrast to the previous generations.
The average mobile user in the US has 37 apps installed, uses 12 each day, and spends 80%+ of their time on just 3. They’re spending an average of 5 hours per day on their phone.
The Rise of Voice
Two out of every three smartphone users in the US are now using voice assistants, like Siri.
Users of the Hound App make 6–8 queries per day on average and are using the app to find out general and local information. As voice search grows, campaigns and organizations will need to think about how they ‘appear’ in these searches and focus on voice search optimization.
Speaking of voice search, about 1 million Amazon Echo units were shipped in the first quarter of 2016. Voice enabled devices in the home will become a part of our daily lives, just like the smartphone and we can expect a similar impact on how we reach voters.
Privacy & Data
Privacy and data usage are growing concerns for users. These two stats show the chilling effect data breaches are having on internet users. Increasingly, campaigns are going to inform supporters and donors about their data security measures.
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