Online behaviours and what to expect in 2022 as the world reverts into normalcy
For marketers allocating resources online, the events of the past 24 months are throwing a spanner in the works: will consumers revert to pre-pandemic habits as the world returns to normal? Or are they settling for a new equilibrium?
To answer this question, we look at the share of time spent on a selection of top media categories since 2019. The results, which are summarized in the table below, show that only few categories have increased their share of time since 2019. These are: Entertainment, News/Information, Financial Services, Health, Education, and Government.
Two categories – Social Media and Family and Youth – experienced an increase in share of time in 2020, which then decreased back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. For the remaining categories, the share of time of the other categories actually decreased.
Share of time spent online, by content category
% of total minutes spent online
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
Social Media | 26% | 28% | 26% |
Entertainment | 18% | 19% | 22% |
Services | 15% | 14% | 13% |
Games | 10% | 9.1% | 8.7% |
Retail | 5.2% | 4.6% | 4.4% |
News/Information | 4.3% | 4.4% | 4.6% |
Search/Navigation | 3.3% | 2.6% | 2.5% |
Directories/Resources | 1.8% | 1.5% | 1.4% |
Financial Services | 1.3% | 1.2% | 1.4% |
Lifestyles | 1.2% | 1.1% | 0.9% |
Sports | 1.1% | 0.8% | 1.0% |
Travel | 0.8% | 0.4% | 0.5% |
Technology | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
Family & Youth | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.4% |
Health | 0.5% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
Automotive | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
Education | 0.3% | 0.5% | 0.6% |
Real Estate | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.3% |
Career Services and Development | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
Government | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.4% |
Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Period 2019 -2021, EU5 region.
Overall, the data points towards the fact that online Entertainment is perhaps the biggest winner of the lockdowns, and the momentum has not abated: the category includes entities such as YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix, which have gained from the lack of offline entertainment options. For marketers, all this points to a larger role of Smart TVs in the digital mix.