Digital Media Consumption Up: Winners and Losers

Overall digital media consumption grew by 15% in August alone, according to a Pivotal Media Research analysis of Nielsen’s August 2018 data as reported by Wayne Friedman in MediaPost.

Winners and Losers

Google goes up. Facebook goes down.

Google products, including YouTube, Google, and Waze account for 32.8% of all digital media consumption. Together, these Google products make up 56% of all the growth. YouTube continues to grow at 20%. In fact, YouTube alone garners 18% of all digital content consumption.

Facebook, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp decreased their share again. From 18.5% in August 2016 to 16.9% in August 2017 to 14.3% of digital consumption in August 2018.

Verizon, including Yahoo, AOL, and Tumblr) had a 3.2% share, down from a 3.5% in August last year.

Amazon, which includes Amazon, Twitch, and Audible) also dropped from a 2.1% August share last year to 1.8% share this year.

Snap is a mixed bag. While showing a decrease from 1.8% last year to 1.5% this year, it’s growing monthly users at double digit levels. However, time spent on Snap is down 23% for the fifth straights month. Brian Wieser at Pivotal points out that the usage number does not include 18 and under.

By my count, that means the top 5 (Google, Facebook, Verizon, Amazon, and Snap) make up 54.6% of all digital media consumption in August. That leaves 46.4% of “other” – none which garner more than a 1.5%. That’s a long, long tail.