Top Insights from Hootsuite’s October Q4 2022 Statshot Report

It’s that time of the quarter! We recently released our Digital 2022 October Statshot report, packed with the latest insights and data from the past quarter to help you inform your social strategy. I’m excited to dive into the top takeaways below—there are some findings you may find surprising! 

People are spending (a little) less time online

According to our report, internet users are spending less time online. Compared to the average of almost 7 hours per day this time last year, that figure has dropped to 6 hours and 37 minutes. 

It’s interesting to see our daily internet activity falling by roughly 5% over the past year. Now, a typical user spends less time online than they did before the pandemic. What’s more, we found that the decline in time spent online was consistent across demographics and geographies. So, what does this mean? Are social media and the internet becoming irrelevant? As a brand, is it still worth engaging people online?

I’m here to tell you that the internet and social media are not going anywhere. The declines we’re seeing don’t indicate that the internet is losing relevance in our everyday lives. Instead, people are becoming more purposeful in how they spend their time online—particularly around consuming news and social media content. I find this shift compelling. With the social media space and the internet becoming increasingly saturated, it’s a clear indicator to companies and brands that adding value to the lives of their customers through all the content they produce has become more important than ever. 

As a marketer, I’m interested to see how brands will approach tackling this challenge. Personally, I’ve found the most successful campaigns include tailored strategies for a few platforms, instead of trying to generalize a message to every platform under the sun. (Take a look at a neat template my team created to help you focus on the platforms that make sense for your business.) 

Podcasts and sonic branding are becoming more popular

Sound has always been a powerful ingredient for any successful brand campaign. I’ve been following the sonic branding trend this year and was thrilled to see the data show that the number of people listening to audio shows has grown by 6% over the past year. Audio is a previously untapped space that has grown so much in the past few years. 

Today, the typical working internet user listens to more than an hour of podcast content every day. The number of people who listen to podcasts has also grown by 7%, with 21.3% of internet users aged 16-64 listening to podcasts each week. I find this space intriguing: it’s an opportunity for brands to be inventive and creative in the way they use audio and sonic branding. (Sonic branding, also known as audio branding or acoustic branding, is the practice of using auditory elements to brand your product or service.)

Like our sense of smell, which can create memories and feelings and resonate differently with people, sound is a unique sense that brands can tap into as well. In the same way that colors and images can trigger specific emotions, sonic branding can use audio cues to invoke feelings you might want associated with your brand. There’s an entire science behind this phenomenon—I’m excited to see how brands continue to innovate in this space.

YouTube retakes the lead in time spent on social  

YouTube has recaptured the lead from TikTok as the platform where users are spending most of their time. Our report reveals that Android users spend an average of 23.4 hours a month using YouTube compared to TikTok's 22.9 hours a month. As much as short form video formats have grown in the past few years, long form content continues to capture our attention as well. 

It’s a true testament to the impact of video content. In my colleague Melanie’s Linkedin Live with report author Simon Kemp, he made an excellent point about the different ways we interact with YouTube and TikTok. TikTok’s vertical design with endless scrolling is a different experience than YouTube’s horizontal video view. It provides a different experience in how we consume long form content. I’m interested to see if other platforms will adopt a similar approach. 

While YouTube does occupy more of our time on social, TikTok is still growing at a rapid pace. Now, TikTok users spend 23 billion hours consuming content in the platform's app every month. Whether your brand is experimenting on YouTube, TikTok, or both, it’s a golden opportunity to look into tactics like engaging creators, creating sonic branding and aligning yourself with people in the YouTube and TikTok space who already have loyal followers and have established themselves within the community. 

If you’re looking to get started with your TikTok strategy, we recently launched our TikTok integration within Hootsuite. Now, you can manage content, engage in conversations and gain insights on your audience’s motivations to inform your TikTok strategy. We’ve even created a Culture Guide to help you navigate the trends on the platform.

People are increasingly accessing social media on the web

Despite most platforms focusing on their mobile apps, our data shows that billions of people are accessing content on these platforms through their respective websites. Our report indicates that nearly five billion unique devices visited YouTube.com in August this year, while 1.6 billion visited Twitter.com. This may be expected, as many people are monitoring Twitter for updates during work or watching YouTube videos on their computers.

The interesting twist for people who are watching Gen Z trends is that the largest increase in social web consumption in the past few months is actually on TikTok.com. The website attracted more than 800 million unique visitors in August this year, with those visitors spending a combined total of 300 million hours watching TikTok videos through the website. 

This is a great reminder to marketers that web still plays an important role in ads and the way people interact with content. Creating content that incorporates the duality of user experience for both web and mobile will be an interesting branding exercise that I anticipate companies will continue to experiment with.

And finally… a few fun facts for good measure

• On Spotify this quarter,  ‘Unholy’ by Sam Smith featuring Kim Petras topped the charts as the most streamed song from September 23 to September 29, 2022, followed by David Guetta &  Bebe Rexha’s ‘I’m Good (Blue).’
• Thor: Love and Thunder takes the top spot in the Disney+  movie rankings, followed by Pinocchio and Encanto in September 2022. In the TV category, She Hulk: Attorney at Law ranked number one, followed by The Simpsons and Bluey.
• In the Netflix charts, Cobra Kai took the top spot as the most popular TV show this September, followed by Fate: The Winx Saga. Love in the Villa was the most popular movie on the platform in September 2022. 

You can read our full October Q4 Statshot Report, and I’d also love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment with the stat that resonated most with you!