The Best Digital Marketing Stats of 2019 — Part 1

By Lynette Sawyer

May 13, 2019

Digital Marketing, Digital Trends, E-mail Marketing, mobile marketing, online advertising, Social Media Marketing, Statistics, Stats, UI/UX, UI, UX, Video Marketing

Nom, nom, nom! Stats!

Digital marketing changes at a rapid pace which makes it difficult for marketers and business owners to keep up with the latest industry trends. From market research, UI/UX testing, to optimizing campaigns, stats play a vital role in all aspects of marketing. Digital market stats help identify and target consumers, serve to find more cost-effective ways to market, and smoke out the least profitable channels you are on. In this article, we explore some of the best marketing stats going into 2019. 

Mobile 

Can you believe it has been ten years since the first iPhone was released? Smartphones opened some incredible new horizons for marketing. At the same time, mobile remains a pain point for most users as well as businesses when it comes to web and digital marketing. Unresponsive sites, bad code, aggressive advertising, or failing to integrate mobile marketing into promotional strategies are just the tipping point of the bad habits many businesses are still guilty of—and we should know better by now!   

• Mobile ads accounted for 63% of all digital ad revenue in 2018. 

• According to January 2018 data, the global mobile population amounted to 3.7 billion unique users. 

• Google drives 59.16% of all mobile search traffic. 

• In 2018, Apple’s App Store registered revenue of US $46.6 billion. 

• To date in 2019, 92% of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile. 

• To date in 2019, two-thirds of Amazon's digital ad budget was spent on mobile.  

• Mobile loading times are far afield of the two-second target. (Marketing Charts, Google) 

• According to Unlockd, 85% of mobile advertisers think they’re providing a positive experience, but only 47% of users agree.

• Mobile will account for 72% of digital the US ad spend by 2019. (eMarketer) 

• Consumers spend more than five hours a day on their smartphone. (Blue Corona) 

• Mobile phone user penetration, worldwide, is expected to reach 63.4% in 2019. (Statista) 

• According to Smart Insights, 80% of internet users own a smartphone.

• In January 2019, there were 3.986 billion unique active mobile internet users. (Statista) 

• There’s a 270% gap in conversion between desktop and mobile. (Smart Insights) 

• Mobile video internet advertising is forecast to experience aggressive growth in the coming years, with expectations to grow from US $3.5 billion in 2015, to US $13.3 billion in 2020. (Statista) 

• Four out of five consumers use smartphones to shop, and mobile devices are used for over 40% of online transactions. (Convince&Convert) 

• Google has had a “mobile-first” indexing policy since 2016. (Hextract) 

• Mobile ad blocking is increasing 90% year over year. (Omnicore) 

• 78% of teenagers now have access to a smartphone. (Thinkwithgoogle) 

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing (more commonly known as SEM), is one strategy that is continuously changing. With the reliance on algorithms and their yearly—or more frequent—updates, marketers must invest time in continual learning to be at the forefront of search marketing. SEM is one of the most critical marketing channels for digital marketing. It generates web traffic. It compliments SEO. It gets your brand at the top of Google and all the other search engine players worldwide; if you do it right. 

• According to MindMeld, 60% of people have started using voice search within the last year.

• The average number of organic results on Google searches has dropped from ten to eight and one-half. (Searchmetrics) 

• The average word length of content that ranks on the first page of Google results is 1,890 words. (Backlinko) 

• Video content is fifty times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text. (MarTech, 2018) 

• Websites with an active blog generate 67% more leads and 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t. 

• According to Ahrefs, 90.88% of all pages (from an index of one billion pages in their content explorer tool) receive no traffic at all, and 4.5% of them get less than ten visits per month. 

• Further to Ahrefs’ data, 12.29% of search queries have featured snippets (quite a lot, it seems!)

• High-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search (Impact)  

• Finally, according to SEO Tribunal:

  • 67 thousand searches are performed on Google every second.

  • 39% of all global e-commerce traffic comes from search. 

  • 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. 

  • Nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results. 

  • 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. 

  • 58% of searches come from mobile. 

  • 97% of page-one results have at least one image on the page. 

  • 46% of all Google searches are local. 

Email Marketing

Though it is not the newest strategy, it is one of the most effective. Email marketing still ranks as one of the most effective ways to generate new leads and entice customers back for additional purchases. When reviewing these stats, it is clear that this strategy will not be going away anytime soon! 

• The best time of day to send emails is between 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (Experian, Marketing Charts) 

• Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns. (Mailchimp) 

• Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019) 

• According to the Content Marketing Institute (2017), 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content.

• Active email accounts are expected to hit 5.6 billion by 2019. (Statista, 2018) 

• According to Hubspot (2022), 83% of B2B companies use e-newsletters as part of their content marketing program.

• According to the Content Marketing Institute (2017), 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success. 

• It's estimated that the U.S. will spend over US $350 million on email advertising in 2019. (Statista, 2019) 

• e-Commerce customers who receive multiple abandoned shopping cart emails are 2.4 times more likely to complete the purchase than those who receive only one follow-up email. (Experian) 

• Mobile opens accounted for 46% of all email opens. (Litmus.com, 2018) 

• According to Convince & Convert (2018), 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device.

• Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails, with 29% of all opens occurring on this platform. Gmail is a close runner-up at 27%. (Campaign Monitor, 2018) 

• When it comes to millennials, 73% prefer communications from businesses to arrive via email. (Adestra, 2016) 

• More than 50% of U.S. respondents check their personal email account more than ten times per day, and it is by far their preferred way to receive updates from brands. (Campaign Monitor, 2017) 

• Of all consumers, 99% check their email every day. (DMA Insights, 2017) 

• For business professionals, 80% believe that email marketing increases customer retention. (Emarsys, 2018) 

• According to SaleCycle (2018), 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.  

• The most opened emails relate to hobbies, with an open rate of 27.35%. (MailChimp, 2018) 

• Of marketers, 59% say email is their most significant source of ROI. (Emma, 2018) 

• Brands using an emoji in their email subject line had a 56% higher open rate than those that did not. (Forbes, 2017) 

Check back with us next week when we will be analyzing the top stats on Content Optimization, Social Media, and Content Marketing. 

Lynette Sawyer

Lynette Sawyer is a Web Project Manager for Falcon-Software, a digital web agency founded in 1994. For the last 13-years Lynette has been in various digital capacities and her expertise goes beyond Project Management. Lynette brings experience and knowledge in graphic design, marketing communications, project management, product management and engagement.