It takes more than a Christmas holiday to stop Australia’s obsession with the internet. 15.7 million Australians were active online in December, according to a new study by Nielsen into the online landscape in Australia during November and December 2013. The study also found a marked increase in internet consumption amongst people aged 2 to 17 during the school holidays, with time online increasing by more than 12 per cent, an additional 1 hour 17 minutes online.
While online consumption was seen to be high in December, the figures were surpassed by November’s statistics. The Nielsen study discovered 28.6 billion pages were viewed in November and 26.8 billion in December, while 36.3 billion minutes were spent online in November and 34.2 billion minutes in December.
In November, 36 hours were spent online across 58 sessions, while in December, 36 hours were spent online across 60 sessions. When it came to mobile page impressions, November witnessed 822.5 million impressions and December saw 776.7 million.
During both November and December, people spent the most amount of time online on Facebook, while Google had the highest number of unique visitors. YouTube had the second highest time on site statistics, while Mi9 had the third highest number of unique visitors. Google, Facebook and Mi9 were also seen to have the best engagement with consumers.
Online users are often associated with the younger generation, however, they were seen to make up the smallest amount of users, with the 50+ age group coming in as the highest users, followed by 35-49, 25-34, 18-24 and lastly 2-17.
Traditional bricks and mortar retail stores are getting a stronger online presence, with many people visiting their online stores over the November/December period. The 10 most successful ‘bricks and mortar’ online retail sites were seen to be Woolworths, Big W, JB Hi-Fi, Coles, Target Australia, Harvey Norman, Woolworths HomeShop, Officeworks, Myer and Kmart Australia.
