DaveStevensNow

Mary Meeker’s annual technology report is now available online at https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18651010/mary-meeker-internet-trends-report-slides-2019. As ever, it’s great value – but it’s a long read at 333 slides and you won’t be surprised to see that again all of the news reports about the Meeker Report talk about its consequences for B2C marketing. What should B2B marketers take from it?

The context is of GDP growing in the US, China, and India, and falling in Europe. There is high global concern about unemployment, albeit not in the US or Germany. US consumer confidence is at a 65 year high. Meeker argues that this relatively rosy picture is aided by B2B online (the growth of real-time platforms such as payment processor DoorDash; the growth of e-marketplaces like on-demand staffing platform Wonolo). These are good markets for B2B businesses to be in.

The number of remote workers in the US is growing slowly but steadily: 5% in 2018. That’s where collaboration tools to enable remote working come in. Collaborative tools for use in enterprises like Slack and Dropbox continue to grow their numbers of users and paying users. Again a key area for B2B businesses to focus.

It’s great to see that B2B organisations are show-cased in the report for enabling their customers to collect data to understand end customer wants and to improve their products, processes, data and analytics, and relationships:- for example Qualtrics (and customer, Salesforce (and customer Adidas), Stripe (and customer Slack), Plaid (and customer Betterment), and Slack (and customer HelloFresh). These are all strong examples of how B2B companies are enabling businesses to apply data to their everyday workflow processes.

Then there are the consumer trends that will doubtless work their way into how B2B marketing operates over time. Internet use is being driven by China (21% of all internet users are Chinese). Americans are spending more time with digital media than ever: 6.3 hours a day in 2018, up 7% from the year before.  Indeed time online is beginning to become a concern that may be worth watching.

In the US, mobile internet usage continues to grow (up 5% on the previous year), but desk-top usage remains steady and makes up around 2/5 of all internet access (so marketers shouldn’t write off the office PC just yet). When it comes to online platforms, it’s YouTube and Instagram that have grown most in users over the last year. Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp are the top three platforms for users. And ad spend on these platforms is growing.

Video users have doubled in the last year, podcast users in the last four years, gaming users in the last two years. Imagery is becoming more important than text. More than 50% of Twitter impressions now involve posts with images, video or other media.

Online privacy is a growing concern to watch. In Q1, 87% of global web traffic was encrypted, up from 53% in 2016.