Social update from Will Royal, Associate Analyst, Social Media: eMarketer reports that Faceboook and Snapchat’s time spent per day in platform has plateaued for the foreseeable future. This is no surprise to Facebook given the diminishing young adult audience as well as recent updates the platform has made to downrank clickbait posts to focus more on quality time spent. While Instagram has seen an increase in time spent (as well as the Facebook-elusive younger audience), Facebook still outperforms its sister platform in this area by 8 minutes. Time spent should not impact advertising budgets as users are still coming to the platforms and with Facebook focusing on quality vs. quantity, users may be more encouraged to return to the platform for a better user experience.
Teens are checking their phones in the middle of the night – and their parents do too. A new study showed that of those surveyed, 29% of teens and 12% of parents sleep with their mobile devices in their bed, 36% of teens and 26% of parents wake up to check their device at least once during the night, and 40% of teens and 26% of parents use their devices just before going to sleep.
Medical schools are realizing that training surgeons are less dexterous than generations before, and the reason may be related to their childhood hobbies. Woodworking and sewing, painting and music – they’re all becoming secondary to using screens.
Campaign of the day from Mark Pappas, VP, SEM & Emerging Media: Mercedes recently partnered up with Mattel to release a special Matchbox car of the Mercedes-Benz 220SE driven by female driver Ewy Rosqvist when she won the three-day Argentinian Grand Prix in 1962. Mercedes is looking to change cultural/gender expectations formed at early ages. In the video below young girls were asked to pick a toy from an assortment on a table in front of them – none of the girls initially picked the car because they said “it is a boy toy.” They were then shown the video of Ewy Rosqvist winning the Gran Prix. Watch the video and see their reactions.
It’s a soap opera-worthy court case that shows how social media has the power to impact our lives: after a French rock star’s death, his grown children successfully used his Instagram posts to prove they were worthy of an inheritance, versus the will which had given everything to his fourth wife.