The 2008 Digital Year in Review

The Comscore 2008 Digital Year in Review recaps key trends in U.S. digital marketing for the year. This comprehensive report highlights the key trends in several areas of digital marketing, including e-commerce, top-growing sites and site categories, search, online video, online advertising and mobile, and how digital marketers can capitalize on these trends in 2009.

Key findings highlighted in the report include:

• Search query volume on the five core search engines increased 21 percent in 2008 from the previous year, with Google Sites accounting for nearly 90 percent of this growth.
• Online video viewing accounted for 12.5 percent of Americans’ total time spent on the Internet in November 2008, up from 8.5 percent the previous year.
• U.S. Internet users viewed a total of 4.5 trillion display ads during the past twelve months, with the average person viewing more than 2,000 ads per month.
• Retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending grew 6 percent to $130.1 billion in 2008. The year ranked as the softest year for retail e-commerce spending growth since Comscore began tracking the industry in 2001.
• The mobile industry continued to witness the growing popularity of smartphones in 2008 with subscriptions to smartphones increasing more than 100 percent during the year.