State of Global Content Marketing: Highlights from Our Report

Whatever else you can say about it, 2016 was a big year for content. Content marketing has finally hit critical mass, and around the globe, marketers are competing with an explosive news cycle for eyeballs. Check out our interactive ebook that we created in partnership with Ceros to learn more. Meanwhile, here are some highlights and key takeaways from the report below.

Consumption Trends

Globally, mobile has surpassed every other method of content consumption: 52% of all Outbrain page views were mobile in 2016. France, and South Africa are all majority-mobile viewing countries, and almost every region has seen a huge mobile push, especially in video consumption. 42% of South Africans view video on mobile, the second-highest year-on-year growth in that area. Almost ⅔ of the people in the UK have smartphones, and that number is growing worldwide. Mobile is big big big and getting bigger.

Additionally, can you believe that U.S. adults spent 10 hours and 39 minutes per day on their screens consuming media in Q1 of 2016. Q1! You know that number only goes up when Q4 rolls around. Guys, we need to get outside more, get some fresh air.

Big trends in North America were chatbots, which Microsoft’s CEO believes are the new apps, and VR. Native advertising spend, already $10.7b, is expected to double by 2018.

In India and Singapore, internet penetration is growing with internet users skewing younger, more educated, and more interested in video. Pretty much across the board, video is huge. Germany saw a 27.5% jump in video viewing last year, and 45% of all Israelis watched a video on their phone daily in 2016. 54% of people in Singapore watched digital video regularly, and social and video were popular with Brazil’s 64 million smartphone users. 72% of all Indian internet traffic is projected to be video by 2018.

The State of Content Marketing

Content marketing continues to grow globally. Germans trust brands almost as much as they trust traditional media outlets (42% vs 44%). 96% of Italian marketers manage their digital content and 94.6% of Spanish marketers used content marketing. 84% of Australian marketers say that creating more engaging content is their top priority for 2017.

Ad blockers hit big last year in Italy, causing losses for media outlets, but were much less popular in Japan.

The Biggest News Stories of 2016

Overall, if your perception was that 2016 had too much news and all of it bad, well, you’re not exactly wrong. According to our report the 2016 top-performing pieces of Outbrain content in almost every region were tragedies, terrorist attacks, Brexit, and the U.S. election. North America was reading about 9/11 families suing Saudi Arabia, the Paris attacks, and the DNC hacks. Europe focused on terror attacks in Paris, Munich, and Nice; Israel on two attacks in Tel Aviv; India on a disturbing rape case; ANZ on the New Zealand earthquake and a theme park accident; and Singapore on a transit accident.

A big outlier in this was Japan, whose top three stories all centered around celebrities’ criminal behavior. South Africa, too, had their focus elsewhere. Their most-clicked articles were about unusually cold weather and a report on racist hairstyle rules in schools.

For more insights and data about content consumption in key markets last year, check out the full report.