Digital Numbers Every Marketer Should Know

-- Over 1 billion people participate in social networking worldwide, with a growth rate of about 25 percent per year, according to research firm comScore. The growth rate in Europe is 35 percent; in the Middle East, it’s 66 percent.

-- At least 60 percent of wealthy consumers in the United States belong to social networking sites. According to a recent Wealth Survey from the Luxury Institute, American consumers with an average income of $287,000 and an average net worth of 2.1 million typically have memberships in 2.8 social networks and an average of 110 connections.

- Today, over 100 million Americans send and receive text messages on any given day—including 65 percent of all mobile subscribers under the age of thirty. Over 83 percent of teens use text messaging, based on a 2009 Nielsen study.

-- Nearly 8 million people regularly use Twitter and similar applications.

-- Nearly 62 percent of all Internet users in the United States—some 184 million people—consume the kind of free or ad-supported online video to be found at Blip.tv, YouTube, Hulu, or subscription-based served like Time-Warner Cable’s TV Everywhere service. According to Pew, nearly 57 percent of these viewers routinely send links to videos they’ve watched to others, creating a network multiplier effect that frequently produces viral hits.

-- Nearly 15 percent of online consumers actually post their own “user-generated” videos on sites like YouTube, according to Pew, where they can be instantly shared with the 79 million people who have so far viewed the some 3 billion videos there.

-- By 2012, based on projections by Forrester Research, marketers are expected to spend $61 billion a year on digital platforms to create emotional connections with customers—and to generate breathtaking competitive advantage through the power of now.

Adapted from THE ON-DEMAND BRAND: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World by Rick Mathieson (AMACOM 2010).