14 ms·

Mary Meeker’s eye-popping annual Internet Trends report hits the web

141 points by Codhisattva 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Definitely worth scrolling through the slides. The 're-imagining' ones are really good.
127001brewer 14y ago
I found the following interesting: Lessons from Developed Mobile Markets like Japan ... Mobile Monetization Levels in USA Could Surpass Desktop Within 1-3 Years The "Monetization Levels" are the advertising revenue. The report states that desktop internet advertising revenue grew from $55 million (estimated) in 1995 to $73 billion in 2011 (estimated). (And advertising revenue per user went from $9 to $49 in the same period.) However, I have doubts that internet advertising will be as successful on mobile devices. Personally, I tend to avoid ad-supported apps or simply do not "click" on any ads within apps, but that's just me and I may be really off-base with the overall behavior of app users.
- jpadkins 14y ago
  maybe. if mobile ads means using geo, then the ads revenues might be better. Think "check out this new bar near you" or "here is a deal a block away". There is a lot of money chasing foot traffic in urban areas.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  So for reference, when I left Sun in '95 I joined a startup named 'Golfweb' as their 'technology' guy. Golfweb was an online magazine about Golf, entirely digital, no print. They had partnered with Golf Digest (print only) because GD didn't know if this 'Internet thing' was a fad or not. Personally I think our agreement was with some nerdy kid in the mailroom but I digress. Anyway, we tried to sell companies like Ping Golf on banner ads. These guys were paying $10K - $40K per color page in Golf Digest so maybe $250K an issue and we were asking them to pay us $40K to have all the ads on our web site during the Masters Tournament. It was a hard sell even though at the time we were one of exactly two professional sites covering golf on the Internet. The challenge wasn't that Ping didn't understand advertising, what they didn't know yet was how effective it would be. They measured everything and without data they didn't know if it was more or less valuable than print. Because of that they were unwilling to spend any money. As it turned out that campaign was pretty wildly successful for them. Because of it they were way ahead of their competitors in exploiting the Internet for ads. Once they were in, their competitors followed, and that created a market model for costing golf advertising. So this is the same issue with mobility monetization today. Since there isn't a huge amount of experience out there it is not easy to justify spending a lot on it vs web moneitization which is by now a 'proven' channel. But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. In her presentation, Meeks proposed that mobile monetization should at least equal web monetization and probably exceed it. I've seen other people get there by reasoning about how people use their phone to find nearby places that can service some immediate need like food, car service, gas, Etc. As a contrived, but plausible, example consider a world with multiple Uber type livery services, and a user finds a nearby place on their phone's map application. You can sell the rights to a button that says "Pick me up here and take me there." to a company like Uber very effectively. As an 'advertisement' that is worth probably $1 - $3 a click depending on what the fare is going to be if its taken. Now is that exactly an ad? I don't know. It is a convenient pairing of service provider offering at a probabilistically determined 'good' time to offer. That any individual doesn't click on the offer is fine, as long as some percentage (even a small percent) do.
  - 127001brewer 14y ago
    Great comment: ... But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. And I like your example using Uber, but I immediately see the difficultly of a car service company supporting that type of interactive technology. (Again, I may be way off base, but I would think a car service company, using your example, would have to invest heavily, relatively, in technology to support your example.)
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      Uber actually does this today if you have the app. You tell it where you want to go, it shows you where the nearest car is and you say "pick me up!" (big green button) and you're done. What isn't yet done is that when you run the Maps app on the phone and you look for some place nearby, it 'up-sells' you an option to do what the Uber app currently does.
ojbyrne 14y ago
Hard to not be skeptical about something so positive from someone who played a key part in creating the first tech bubble.
- adventureful 14y ago
  What key role did Meeker play in creating the first tech bubble?
  - omellet 14y ago
    She was one of the biggest proponents (maybe the originator?) of the 'eyeballs' valuations of internet companies.
  - frankdenbow 14y ago
    this may give you some data points: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/16/dot-com-conflict-of-interest-poster-girl-mary-meeker-warns-america-think-of-the-children-and-cut-social-security/ http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/16/dot-com-conflict...
  - dxbydt 14y ago
    Google page 179 "Hedgehogging" by Barton Biggs. There's one whole chapter in that book that's an indictment of Meeker, Blodget, Quattrone, Glassman ( the Dow 36000 guy ) and the rest of the folks who supplied the oxygen for the previous bubble. And now Meeker's back...so that should signal something. The key incident was the conference were Biggs was asked "Is the internet revolutionary ?".Biggs said "No". A collective boo from the audience. "Ok so what is revolutionary ?". Biggs thought for a while and said "The Air Conditioner. Without an AC, the entire south of the USA like the Carolinas, Florida & parts of Texas would remain unpopulated" Biggs was laughed at. A month later the Dow plunged 2000 points over a 2 month period. Fun times ;)
    - eli 14y ago
      "Meeker's back" does not signal anything. She gives a similar presentation every year. http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/mary-meekers-2011-presentation-on-internet-trends-slides/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/mary-meekers-2011-presentat...
nick_urban 14y ago
The biggest take-away for me is that we are changing the way we do... pretty much everything. Two things I noticed: 1. There is a big shift towards convenience and broader participation. 2. An increasing proportion of our activities are conducted through smart phones and tablets instead of going somewhere or using a device specifically designed for a given purpose. Many activities are becoming "just another app" and losing their traditional context. Finally, there's a cautionary message about US debt. The disturbing chart of US entitlement and interest spending vs. revenue. At the current rate, in 2025, the government will be spending more on entitlements and interest alone (NOT taking into account government spending on defense, education, etc.) than they have revenue.
- muzz 14y ago
  The "cautionary" message appears to be more political than anything else. The extrapolated line for "entitlements and interest" is almost identical to that of Paul Ryan's budget and groups things like Social Security-- which those receiving it PAID for-- as "entitlements".
  - ajross 14y ago
    It is, basically. The "entitlement" framing is a republican trope at this point; it's designed to make it sound like we're handing out cash to people who don't deserve it. If you relabel it "Medicare" and "Social Security" (concepts that are more familiar to the reader and thus make the graph easier to interpret) people tend to view it as worthwhile spending. Likewise the revenue numbers look a little spun. They appear not to be including the near term bump due to the expiration of the 2001 tax cuts.
  - adventureful 14y ago
    While I agree that it's hard to have a real discussion about SS or Medicare without people sensationalizing one side or the other, the math is very real and the consequences are already here. SS is bleeding out right now with a negative annual run, and will get worse every year for at least the next 20 years. There is no SS trust that we can tap into. It's all going to come from Fed monetization. By the time this decade is out, SS will be running a negative $100+ billion per year cash flow. We were supposed to have eight more years of surplus than what we did, that didn't happen. http://www.factcheck.org/2011/02/democrats-deny-social-securitys-red-ink/ http://www.factcheck.org/2011/02/democrats-deny-social-secur... It's also worth pointing out that we're taking on over $5 trillion per year in new liabilities that we don't have the cash flow to pay for, when you count debt + entitlements that have to eventually be paid for. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/fed...
koglerjs 14y ago
I was irritated at the re-use of "eye-popping" hype and the somewhat re-hashed statistics. But the series of never-ending "Re-imagining X" slides really dramatically demonstrate technology's impact on every part of our lives.
dcaranda 14y ago
I'm confused. Having trouble reconciling: Slide 17: 26% of media consumption time is with Internet vs. 10% with Mobile (source: IAB) and separate stats from Flurry: 72 mins/day w Web Browsing vs. 94 mins/day w Mobile Apps (source: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/80241/Mobile-App-Usage-Further-Dominates-Web-Spurred-by-Facebook http://blog.flurry.com/bid/80241/Mobile-App-Usage-Further-Do...) Has mobile not overtaken desktop Web yet?
- samstave 14y ago
  I consume a hell of a lot more content on my desktop than my phone - and I am on both constantly. The reason is the screen on my laptop is large, my phones is small. I constantly have 20+ tabs open - on my phone I average ~4 pages open. Also, the mobile speed of 3G sucks compared to desktop speeds (even a mobile browser on wifi at home renders slower than my laptop) There are just so many reasons why I prefer to consume my internet servings via my laptop over my phone(s)
bashour 14y ago
pretty awesome slide show
Aloisius 14y ago
I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush Tax Cuts are kept indefinitely in the heart of a deep recession. The CBO has released a 2011 budget outlook report (2012 is due next week). Even under the pessimistic alternative fiscal scenario, that 2025 date now doesn't happen until well after 2035 (the last date they try to estimate for) That's not to say thing aren't out of control, but most of those problems are related to healthcare not "entitlements." Social security has only an extremely modest increase in cost. Healthcare is where the big hit comes from caused by and large by baby boomers aging and the restriction placed on the federal government to really negotiate rates. If Obama had had support to implement single payer and got rid of the restrictions about negotiating rates, we'd live in a far more fiscally sound place today.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  > I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are at war right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. This speaks to how little the wars have affected Americans as a whole. No significant cuts in programs, no higher taxes to pay for the outlay, no draft of young men and women. For probably 99% of the population, the only effect the wars have had is something extra to hear about on the TV. So little an effect that it makes people think we're in peacetime.
  - Codhisattva 14y ago
    Well that's the mass media and government line, but the reality is that war spending has affected everything from state budgets to employment.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  We've been at war since 1898, usually fighting more than one at once. Healthcare costs are 120% of the problem.
mikecane 14y ago
Amazed that one of the biggest changes is something she missed. How mobile tech changed the face and effectiveness of protest, from Egypt and the Mid-East to Occupy and ongoing (current protests in Quebec). Also missing is how effective live video -- especially Ustream -- has been in bypassing the MSM TV news to show the actions of police directly. And how such footage has been used to void arrests of protesters by perjuring police.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Not being in the Middle East (or ever having been, ever), I have to question that narrative, though it's a common one. We know the Egyptian government eventually shut down internet access (leading to ingenious hacks, such as the Twitter-voice-recognition-bot Google wrote), but the protests continued unabated. I'm sure social media had some role to play in the Arab Spring - but the extent of it I feel has been blown out of proportion by technocrats all too ready to self-congratulate. After all, it feels nicer if you're not building that tool by which millions can breathlessly follow the every move of B-list celebrities. Indeed, wouldn't it be nice if all the hours we spend in air-conditioned offices was actually freedom fighting?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
uptown 14y ago
I wonder how much of the shift to mobile over desktop has to do with the fact that they haven't been completely clogged up with advertising yet.
aw3c2 14y ago
Direct link to PDF: http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012 http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012 The linked story has nothing too interesting or important to say by itself so you can safely skip it. edit: Actually, I would say it might not be worth it if you are not an Apple fanboy and neither too fond of sources like StatCounter.

141 points by Codhisattva 14y ago

Definitely worth scrolling through the slides. The 're-imagining' ones are really good.

I found the following interesting: Lessons from Developed Mobile Markets like Japan ... Mobile Monetization Levels in USA Could Surpass Desktop Within 1-3 Years The "Monetization Levels" are the advertising revenue. The report states that desktop internet advertising revenue grew from $55 million (estimated) in 1995 to $73 billion in 2011 (estimated). (And advertising revenue per user went from $9 to $49 in the same period.) However, I have doubts that internet advertising will be as successful on mobile devices. Personally, I tend to avoid ad-supported apps or simply do not "click" on any ads within apps, but that's just me and I may be really off-base with the overall behavior of app users.

jpadkins 14y ago
maybe. if mobile ads means using geo, then the ads revenues might be better. Think "check out this new bar near you" or "here is a deal a block away". There is a lot of money chasing foot traffic in urban areas.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
So for reference, when I left Sun in '95 I joined a startup named 'Golfweb' as their 'technology' guy. Golfweb was an online magazine about Golf, entirely digital, no print. They had partnered with Golf Digest (print only) because GD didn't know if this 'Internet thing' was a fad or not. Personally I think our agreement was with some nerdy kid in the mailroom but I digress. Anyway, we tried to sell companies like Ping Golf on banner ads. These guys were paying $10K - $40K per color page in Golf Digest so maybe $250K an issue and we were asking them to pay us $40K to have all the ads on our web site during the Masters Tournament. It was a hard sell even though at the time we were one of exactly two professional sites covering golf on the Internet. The challenge wasn't that Ping didn't understand advertising, what they didn't know yet was how effective it would be. They measured everything and without data they didn't know if it was more or less valuable than print. Because of that they were unwilling to spend any money. As it turned out that campaign was pretty wildly successful for them. Because of it they were way ahead of their competitors in exploiting the Internet for ads. Once they were in, their competitors followed, and that created a market model for costing golf advertising. So this is the same issue with mobility monetization today. Since there isn't a huge amount of experience out there it is not easy to justify spending a lot on it vs web moneitization which is by now a 'proven' channel. But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. In her presentation, Meeks proposed that mobile monetization should at least equal web monetization and probably exceed it. I've seen other people get there by reasoning about how people use their phone to find nearby places that can service some immediate need like food, car service, gas, Etc. As a contrived, but plausible, example consider a world with multiple Uber type livery services, and a user finds a nearby place on their phone's map application. You can sell the rights to a button that says "Pick me up here and take me there." to a company like Uber very effectively. As an 'advertisement' that is worth probably $1 - $3 a click depending on what the fare is going to be if its taken. Now is that exactly an ad? I don't know. It is a convenient pairing of service provider offering at a probabilistically determined 'good' time to offer. That any individual doesn't click on the offer is fine, as long as some percentage (even a small percent) do.
- 127001brewer 14y ago
  Great comment: ... But over time the data will come in and people will then be able to make reasoned choices about what they are willing to pay to be on some potential customer's phone at some given time. And I like your example using Uber, but I immediately see the difficultly of a car service company supporting that type of interactive technology. (Again, I may be way off base, but I would think a car service company, using your example, would have to invest heavily, relatively, in technology to support your example.)
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Uber actually does this today if you have the app. You tell it where you want to go, it shows you where the nearest car is and you say "pick me up!" (big green button) and you're done. What isn't yet done is that when you run the Maps app on the phone and you look for some place nearby, it 'up-sells' you an option to do what the Uber app currently does.

ojbyrne 14y ago

Hard to not be skeptical about something so positive from someone who played a key part in creating the first tech bubble.

adventureful 14y ago
What key role did Meeker play in creating the first tech bubble?
- omellet 14y ago
  She was one of the biggest proponents (maybe the originator?) of the 'eyeballs' valuations of internet companies.
- frankdenbow 14y ago
  this may give you some data points: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/16/dot-com-conflict-of-interest-poster-girl-mary-meeker-warns-america-think-of-the-children-and-cut-social-security/ http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/16/dot-com-conflict...
- dxbydt 14y ago
  Google page 179 "Hedgehogging" by Barton Biggs. There's one whole chapter in that book that's an indictment of Meeker, Blodget, Quattrone, Glassman ( the Dow 36000 guy ) and the rest of the folks who supplied the oxygen for the previous bubble. And now Meeker's back...so that should signal something. The key incident was the conference were Biggs was asked "Is the internet revolutionary ?".Biggs said "No". A collective boo from the audience. "Ok so what is revolutionary ?". Biggs thought for a while and said "The Air Conditioner. Without an AC, the entire south of the USA like the Carolinas, Florida & parts of Texas would remain unpopulated" Biggs was laughed at. A month later the Dow plunged 2000 points over a 2 month period. Fun times ;)
  - eli 14y ago
    "Meeker's back" does not signal anything. She gives a similar presentation every year. http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/mary-meekers-2011-presentation-on-internet-trends-slides/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/mary-meekers-2011-presentat...

nick_urban 14y ago

The biggest take-away for me is that we are changing the way we do... pretty much everything. Two things I noticed: 1. There is a big shift towards convenience and broader participation. 2. An increasing proportion of our activities are conducted through smart phones and tablets instead of going somewhere or using a device specifically designed for a given purpose. Many activities are becoming "just another app" and losing their traditional context. Finally, there's a cautionary message about US debt. The disturbing chart of US entitlement and interest spending vs. revenue. At the current rate, in 2025, the government will be spending more on entitlements and interest alone (NOT taking into account government spending on defense, education, etc.) than they have revenue.

muzz 14y ago
The "cautionary" message appears to be more political than anything else. The extrapolated line for "entitlements and interest" is almost identical to that of Paul Ryan's budget and groups things like Social Security-- which those receiving it PAID for-- as "entitlements".
- ajross 14y ago
  It is, basically. The "entitlement" framing is a republican trope at this point; it's designed to make it sound like we're handing out cash to people who don't deserve it. If you relabel it "Medicare" and "Social Security" (concepts that are more familiar to the reader and thus make the graph easier to interpret) people tend to view it as worthwhile spending. Likewise the revenue numbers look a little spun. They appear not to be including the near term bump due to the expiration of the 2001 tax cuts.
- adventureful 14y ago
  While I agree that it's hard to have a real discussion about SS or Medicare without people sensationalizing one side or the other, the math is very real and the consequences are already here. SS is bleeding out right now with a negative annual run, and will get worse every year for at least the next 20 years. There is no SS trust that we can tap into. It's all going to come from Fed monetization. By the time this decade is out, SS will be running a negative $100+ billion per year cash flow. We were supposed to have eight more years of surplus than what we did, that didn't happen. http://www.factcheck.org/2011/02/democrats-deny-social-securitys-red-ink/ http://www.factcheck.org/2011/02/democrats-deny-social-secur... It's also worth pointing out that we're taking on over $5 trillion per year in new liabilities that we don't have the cash flow to pay for, when you count debt + entitlements that have to eventually be paid for. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/fed...

koglerjs 14y ago

I was irritated at the re-use of "eye-popping" hype and the somewhat re-hashed statistics. But the series of never-ending "Re-imagining X" slides really dramatically demonstrate technology's impact on every part of our lives.

dcaranda 14y ago

I'm confused. Having trouble reconciling: Slide 17: 26% of media consumption time is with Internet vs. 10% with Mobile (source: IAB) and separate stats from Flurry: 72 mins/day w Web Browsing vs. 94 mins/day w Mobile Apps (source: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/80241/Mobile-App-Usage-Further-Dominates-Web-Spurred-by-Facebook http://blog.flurry.com/bid/80241/Mobile-App-Usage-Further-Do...) Has mobile not overtaken desktop Web yet?

samstave 14y ago
I consume a hell of a lot more content on my desktop than my phone - and I am on both constantly. The reason is the screen on my laptop is large, my phones is small. I constantly have 20+ tabs open - on my phone I average ~4 pages open. Also, the mobile speed of 3G sucks compared to desktop speeds (even a mobile browser on wifi at home renders slower than my laptop) There are just so many reasons why I prefer to consume my internet servings via my laptop over my phone(s)

bashour 14y ago

pretty awesome slide show

Aloisius 14y ago

I find most of her slides interesting, but she circled the area from around 2002 to 2011 on slide 96 as "the biggest peacetime gap between revenue and expenses in USA history." I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are _at war_ right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. Further, she used the 2010 budget outlook report from the CBO which takes the most pessimistic view that the Bush Tax Cuts are kept indefinitely in the heart of a deep recession. The CBO has released a 2011 budget outlook report (2012 is due next week). Even under the pessimistic alternative fiscal scenario, that 2025 date now doesn't happen until well after 2035 (the last date they try to estimate for) That's not to say thing aren't out of control, but most of those problems are related to healthcare not "entitlements." Social security has only an extremely modest increase in cost. Healthcare is where the big hit comes from caused by and large by baby boomers aging and the restriction placed on the federal government to really negotiate rates. If Obama had had support to implement single payer and got rid of the restrictions about negotiating rates, we'd live in a far more fiscally sound place today.

ceejayoz 14y ago
> I'm not sure Ms. Meeker is aware, but we are at war right now. For most of that period, we were fighting multiple wars at once. This speaks to how little the wars have affected Americans as a whole. No significant cuts in programs, no higher taxes to pay for the outlay, no draft of young men and women. For probably 99% of the population, the only effect the wars have had is something extra to hear about on the TV. So little an effect that it makes people think we're in peacetime.
- Codhisattva 14y ago
  Well that's the mass media and government line, but the reality is that war spending has affected everything from state budgets to employment.
pessimizer 14y ago
We've been at war since 1898, usually fighting more than one at once. Healthcare costs are 120% of the problem.

mikecane 14y ago

Amazed that one of the biggest changes is something she missed. How mobile tech changed the face and effectiveness of protest, from Egypt and the Mid-East to Occupy and ongoing (current protests in Quebec). Also missing is how effective live video -- especially Ustream -- has been in bypassing the MSM TV news to show the actions of police directly. And how such footage has been used to void arrests of protesters by perjuring police.

potatolicious 14y ago
Not being in the Middle East (or ever having been, ever), I have to question that narrative, though it's a common one. We know the Egyptian government eventually shut down internet access (leading to ingenious hacks, such as the Twitter-voice-recognition-bot Google wrote), but the protests continued unabated. I'm sure social media had some role to play in the Arab Spring - but the extent of it I feel has been blown out of proportion by technocrats all too ready to self-congratulate. After all, it feels nicer if you're not building that tool by which millions can breathlessly follow the every move of B-list celebrities. Indeed, wouldn't it be nice if all the hours we spend in air-conditioned offices was actually freedom fighting?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

uptown 14y ago

I wonder how much of the shift to mobile over desktop has to do with the fact that they haven't been completely clogged up with advertising yet.

aw3c2 14y ago

Direct link to PDF: http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012 http://www.kpcb.com/file/kpcb-internet-trends-2012 The linked story has nothing too interesting or important to say by itself so you can safely skip it. edit: Actually, I would say it might not be worth it if you are not an Apple fanboy and neither too fond of sources like StatCounter.