Content is STILL King

The study on online activity titled the “Internet Activity Index” released by  the Online Publishers Association shows the  trends of the types of activity that have occurred on the Internet over the past 6 years. The study’s findings has important implications for online marketers and how they should be focusing their time, resources and strategies in 2009 and beyond.

Five key findings of the study?

1. Internet users continue to spend a majority of their “time” with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009.
2. Emergence of Community (it wasn’t measured in 2003 as it wasn’t statistically significant enough and not on the radar)
3. Content is still king; the content rich sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time and provide an environment for brand marketers to reach and engage with consumers despite the emergence of  community sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
4. Community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities such as email and instant messaging more efficiently.
5. Time spent with Search doubled.

Here is the report as it is reported on the Online-Publishers Site:

Share of Time Spent Online (%) Jul08 Aug08 Sep08 Oct08 Nov08 Dec08 Jan09 Feb09 Mar09 Apr09 May09 Jun09 Jul09 Commerce 14.1 13.5 13.1 12.8 14.3 16.0 14.1 13.4 13.2 13.3 12.8 11.0 10.9 Communications 28.2 29.0 28.7 28.0 26.5 25.9 26.5 27.4 27.0 26.4 26.3 25.2 24.4 Community 9.0 8.9 8.3 8.7 9.7 9.7 11.3 12.6 12.8 13.7 14.5 18.5 20.6 Content 43.4 43.2 44.6 45.3 44.5 43.2 42.8 41.1 41.5 41.3 41.1 40.6 39.6 Search 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.2 5.0 5.3 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.3 5.3 4.7 4.5 % Change in Share of Time, Month-Over-Month Jul08 Aug08 Sep08 Oct08 Nov08 Dec08 Jan09 Feb09 Mar09 Apr09 May09 Jun09 Jul09 Commerce 3.4 4.3 3.0 2.3 11.7 11.9 11.9 5.0 1.5 0.8 3.8 - 0.9 Communications 2.4 2.8 1.0 2.4 5.4 2.3 2.3 3.4 1.5 2.2 0.4 - 3.2 Community 2.3 1.1 6.7 4.8 11.5 0.0 16.5 11.5 1.6 7.0 5.8 - 11.4 Content 2.6 0.5 3.2 1.6 1.8 2.9 0.9 4.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 - 2.5 Search 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 3.8 6.0 0.0 1.9 1.9 3.6 0.0 - 4.3

*Notes: Excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains. Percentage change indicates the percentage increase or decrease from the previous month’s value (June 2009 % change not shown due to introduction of Nielsen’s NetView RDD//Online data). Share of Time data based on Total Time values.

Source: OPA and Nielsen Online