I thought last Sunday (10/10/10) was actually “Ben 10″ day, since I spent a good part of the morning watching Ben 10 episode after Ben 10 episode with my 5 year old son, but it turns out it was “digital day.” You would think as Bite head of Digital for APAC I would have known. It was also the well chosen date that TNS released the TNS Digital Life study results – self billed as “the world’s largest ever digital research project” by “the world’s largest custom market research company.” They surveyed 50,000 people in 46 countries. You have to admit, that’s a big survey.
A few blog posts have covered how great a digital marketing tool this is for TNS, including this one called “Guaranteed Earned Media“. In fact, “TNS digital life” is trending fast with near zero Google results for Saturday. On Tuesday, it was up to 7,700 and just now (Thursday am in Asia), it’s up to 9,430. Kudos to TNS.
The top headline grabber from the survey in Asia is “Malaysians have 233 friends, Japanese have 29.” The subtext is that while Japanese have fewer, they are closer with the ones they have. I did a very very unscientific poll of my (3) Malaysian and (5) Japanese friends on Facebook and came up with an average of 375 friends for my Malaysian friends and 58 for my Japanese friends, but of course working in the digital industry, my “friends” probably have more than the average number in the country. I still wonder though if it’s because the Japanese are using some cyber secret friend’s society that TNS is not aware of. I asked a couple of my Japanese friends, but they wouldn’t tell me…
Here are some other tidbits from the results:
- Online is transformational, especially in emerging markets – “Online I can better express my feelings…”
- They also added in 6 digital “lifestyles”: influencers, communicators, knowledge seekers, networkers, aspirers, functional. China, India, and Emerging Asia are over weighted in Communicators: I just love talking and expressing myself; and Influencers: The internet is an integral part of my life.
- In Latin America, the Middle East and China, users spend 5.2 hours on social networking per week, compared to 4 hours on email, while in “mature markets,” users spend 3.8 hours social networking and 5.1 hours on email. Users in Malaysia spend the most time on social networks, at 9 hours per week (so many friends…)
- This is due partially to the fact that in emerging markets mobile is used more than email to access the internet: TNS says mobile users spend more time on social networking (3.1 hours per week) than email (2.2 hours per week)… but of course some are just using Facebook as an email tool.
- Basically there is a lot of leapfrogging going on in the emerging countries.
- Those in emerging markets are more responsive to brands, more likely to upload pics, post blogs, and play games online or on the phone – which is very interesting as the rates of penetration increase rapidly in those markets (in particular in Asia).