Welcome to the September 2022 Digital Market Overview. Using UKOM endorsed data from Ipsos iris, which launched in 2021, the DMO provides a top-line snapshot of the UK population’s online behaviour across PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
Source: © Ipsos, Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, July and September 2022
Key insights include:
- Compared to July 2022, the average time online per day in September 2022 (among those aged 15+) was seven minutes more at 3hrs 39 minutes. This continues to be higher among 15-24s (4hrs 18m) and females (3hrs 50m).
- 72% of all minutes are spent on smartphones, but this is less than 50% among those aged 65+ who spend more than a quarter of their time on tablet devices.
- Average smartphone time per day is 2hrs 30 mins among all aged 15+, but this rises to over 3hrs for those who have children aged 0-5.
- Ipsos iris tracks usage of over a thousand apps each month, but only six of them reach over 30 million people and these are all owned by either Alphabet or Meta. Twenty-eight apps reach over 10 million or more than 20% of the internet population.
- The Queen’s death and funeral contributed to changes in online behaviour, Royal.uk, which only had 177,000 visitors in July, saw its audience increase to 4.78 million in September. Hello! Magazine’s online audience increased by a third: 14.7 million people visited in September – 3.7 million more than in July. Another magazine that did well online was Time Out – its audience went up by 51% from 3.5 million to 5.2 million as all eyes turned to London.
- Most of the newspaper brands also added to their audiences. The Guardian, The Evening Standard and The Telegraph were all in the top 10 online brands which added the most audience between July and September. However, when examining daily data for 08 September and comparing it with the day before, The Guardian, The Sun and the Mirror had the largest audience increases.
- Unsurprisingly, The Queen’s passing also drove audience increases for the news broadcaster apps, in particular BBC News and Sky News. Coverage of the funeral on Monday 19 September also resulted in an audience uplift of 60% for BBC iPlayer compared to the day before.
- A couple of other notable mentions this month include ASDA and the ASDA Rewards mobile app whose audience increased from 1.1 million in July to 4.1 million in September as the supermarket rolled out its loyalty scheme nationwide in August. BeReal’s mobile app continues to go from strength to strength – the app now has an audience of over two million – the majority of whom are aged 15-24 (72%) and female (73%).
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