Our recommendations on the top 10 free digital marketing statistics covering secondary data sources for Global, European, UK, US, Asia and Latin America
Online marketers love statistics about digital marketing. Us too. They allow us to review the growth in customer adoption of the latest digital platforms and technologies, make the business case for investment in marketing and allow us to benchmark our growth and performance against competitors.
This post is aimed at helping you if you’re looking to compile your own stats for your sector or your country. Here we share our experience of 10 of the best, most reliable free and paid sources. Everyone has their favourites, but I thought it would be useful to share the ones that I go back to most often each week as I research the updates for Smart Insights members and readers of my books.
We have been keeping this post updated for 5+ years now since the best sources change. I’ve also tried to make the best international marketing sources for different regions and countries clear. If you’re looking for specific digital marketing growth stats to include in your blogs, assignments or presentations, see our 100 must-see digital marketing stats.
To help readers of our blog keep ‘up-to-speed’ with the most significant, best sources of marketing stats we have daily ‘Chart of the Week” posts. From reviewing thousands of stats sources over the years, we’ve found that there are a very small number of quality online marketing statistics sites and sources which are updated at least annually and have a representative sample size from different countries.
Top 10 sites for digital marketing statistics
These sites cover global stats including UK, Europe, US, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Thanks for adding the other suggestions to the comments – well worth checking out for anyone searching for statistics sources who passes this way.
1 Global and country Internet usage breakdown – International Telecomms Union
ITU is THE global and by country source with the biggest sample size for the big picture of digital device usage and trends by continent and use of fixed and mobile broadband access by country per 100 people. It’s the best source for data in all countries, although this is only available for the top-level measures. This is their latest release from the start of 2019 up to the end of 2018 showing the growth opportunity for Internet access and higher-speed smartphone use across the world.
2 Global use of social media sites and devices – Global WebIndex
Global Web Index is a paid service giving insights on consumer use of social network sites globally and different countries from their own panel of 18 million (which they claim to be the largest worldwide), but they regularly feature very specific social media stats on their blog. They stopped releasing reports on Slideshare to encourage purchase of their subscription product, but they often make them available by the We Are Social / Data reportal Slideshare reports – if you’re not aware of these, they are well worth checking out.
This research shows their latest data on social network popularity.
3 For benchmarking sites within a sector for sources – Similar Web
SimilarWeb is a freemium tool for benchmarking the number of visits to sites and mobile app usage. It shows traffic sources for individual sites (good for student projects) with categories and keywords in the paid Pro version.
4 Consumer media use in individual countries – comScore
For detailed insights of consumer Internet usage and ad spend by country, The comScore press releases summarising their panel data are one of the best sources of the latest stats releases. Their blog can also be helpful – I have included within the custom search engine. A similar service based on panel data is Nielsen Insights.
See our Mobile marketing stats research compilation for the latest data on smartphone adoption growth.
5 European Union Digital Marketing Statistics
The EU statistics site Eurostat is the best source for overall European use of digital technology and in individual countries. The Information Society page is the best starting point.
6 Best UK source for consumer Internet usage statistics – OfCom
The Office of Communication Communications Market Report Statistics has in-depth reports on adoption of digital media including telecommunications and the Internet (including broadband adoption), digital television and wireless services in the UK. They also have comparisons to other major developed countries in their international benchmark report.
7 UK National Statistics and consumer trends
The UK Government Office of National Statistics (ONS) site is an alternative source – there is no themed area on Internet use any longer, so search on ‘Internet access’ or ‘Ecommerce’
8 US digital marketing statistics – Marketing Charts and Pew Internet
Marketing Charts is a long-standing aggregator of information about consumer and business adoption of technologies and approaches. Care has to be taken of sample sizes and it tends to focus on US data – it’s rare for it to include any of the sources above.
They often feature Pew Internet Statistics which are one of the best sources for the latest statistics on how Americans use digital media and technology.
9 eMarketer
Emarketer.com is another well-established compilation of digital statistics for online marketers – more US-oriented. It includes a paid option, but many free statistics are published on their blog.
10 Ad Spend and media investment – IAB Research
Research reports on online advertising effectiveness from the UK IAB , US IAB and European IAB (AdEx) and IAB Europe (AdEx).
Recommended Smart Insights marketing statistics compilations
Using these research sources and others we have these compilations of benchmarks to compare the effectiveness of other channels which we will keep updated through 2017:
Alternative digital marketing statistics sources
We will keep this list updated as sources change. Here are some that were formerly useful, but where less digital marketing research tends to be shared today:
Statista is a newer statistical aggregator source that has become popular over the past few years which it’s worth bookmarking. Their charts on Internet and social media usage are often derived from sources here like Global Web Index. Here is their summary of digital marketing growth statistics – they tend to base their nicely produced charts on the sources we’ve identified here – which is good, but they can be dated, so take care you find the latest!
This content was originally published here.