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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

More than two in three people on Earth are now online

It’s only been a few weeks since we published our flagship Digital 2024 Global Overview Report, but even in that short space of time, the world’s digital behaviours have continued to evolve.

The first three months of 2024 have seen a number of big digital milestones, and our huge new Digital 2024 April Global Statshot Report – published in partnership between We Are Social and Meltwater – reveals a wealth of impressive headlines and trends.

More than two-thirds of the world’s population now uses the internet

The overall time that the world spends consuming media has declined

There’s a lot of confusion about what “Gen Z” is really doing online

We may be starting to see a change in the world’s online priorities

Social media user growth continues, despite media misrepresentation

Connected experiences are moving to smaller screens

Video games are on the ascendant, gaining in popularity across all ages

Why marketers might want to take a fresh look at Yahoo!

That’s only a teaser of what that you’ll find in this quarter’s full report though, and this latest edition of our Global Digital Reports series is packed with loads more data, insights, and surprises.

We’ve also added a number of new charts and datasets this quarter, so it’s well worth exploring the full report to see what’s new.

Weighing in at 450 pages, this is by far our richest Global Digital Statshot Report yet, and that’s all thanks to the support and generosity of our wonderful data partners:

All of this analysis was written by a human, without the use of generative AI. We may use AI to help structure data and identify patterns, but we still rely entirely on human expertise to make sense of trends and implications.

Please note the following before you dive into this latest round of data:

GWI has revised the “Types of Websites and Apps Used” in its Core survey, which has had an impact on various values throughout our reports, including behaviours such as the use of search engines and banking apps. As part of the same update, GWI has also revised figures for this question for previous periods. As a result, change data contained in this quarter’s report will reflect “like-for-like” change, but note that values in associated timeline charts may not match those we published in previous reports.

Looking for a guided tour of this quarter’s top stories? This video unpacks 10 essential takeaways from this quarter’s report in just 10 minutes:

The complete Digital 2024 April Global Statshot Report

You’ll find this quarter’s complete report in the embed below (click here if that’s not working for you), but read on past that to explore my in-depth analysis of what all these numbers actually mean for you and your work.

The global state of digital in April 2024

Let’s begin with the latest headlines for digital adoption and use around the world [tip: feel free to copy-paste this section to create an easy social media post – just remember to tag us!]:

Data from the United Nations World Population Prospects shows that there are now 8.10 billion people living on Earth. The global population has increased by 74 million over the past year, resulting in annual population growth of 0.9 percent.

The number of unique mobile phone users sits at 5.65 billion, which means that 69.7 percent of the world’s total population now uses some kind of mobile handset. Unique mobile users grew by 2.4 percent over the past 12 months, thanks to an additional 133 million new users.

Internet users have climbed to 5.44 billion, with 178 million new users over the past year taking the global internet penetration rate to 67.1 percent. As we’ll explore in more detail below, this means that more than 2 in 3 people on Earth are now online. Internet user numbers continue to grow too, with the latest figures pointing to a year-on-year increase of 3.4 percent.

Kepios analysis shows that active social media use continues to grow as well, with platforms adding more than a quarter of a billion new unique user identities since this time last year. The global user total reached 5.07 billion by the start of April 2024, with this figure 5.4 percent higher than the total we saw in April 2023.

But beyond impressive headlines and tasty trivia, what do this quarter’s numbers tell us about how people’s digital behaviours are changing and evolving?

Let’s get nerdy, and go deeper into the numbers…

Kepios’s analysis of the latest data shows that internet users have reached “supermajority” status, with more than two in three people on Earth now online.

Data from a variety of reputable sources including the ITU, GSMA Intelligence, and Eurostat indicate that the number of people using connected technologies reached 5.44 billion at the start of April 2024, which equates to 67.1 percent of the world’s total population.

That global user total has increased by 178 million since this time last year, delivering annual growth of 3.4 percent.

If we take the advent of the web as the start of the internet as we know it today, it’s taken just under 33 years for internet users to reach this important milestone.

For perspective, barely 1 in every 1,000 people on Earth used connected tech when Tim Berners-Lee published the first website on 06 August 1991, when the erstwhile internet user base sat somewhere between 5 and 6 million.

User figures have mushroomed by a factor of almost 1,000 since then though, and at current growth rates, it would only take about 12 days for the world to add the equivalent of every one of those pre-web internet users.

India accounted for more than a third of the global increase in internet users over the past 12 months, with research published by Kantar and IAMAI pointing to an increase of more than 60 million new users since early 2023.

India’s internet population has grown by more than 7 percent over the past year, accelerating a trend that we explored in some detail in a recent deep-dive article.

Meanwhile, China added 27 million new internet users over the past year, Pakistan 24 million, and Indonesia a further 16 million.

In relative terms, Pakistan saw the fastest growth in internet users over the past 12 months, with the country’s connected population increasing by 27 percent year on year.

However, the country’s internet penetration rate still lags the global average, and despite these recent gains, less than half of Pakistan’s population is online today.

At the other end of the spectrum, 11 countries now report internet adoption rates in excess of 99 percent, while a total of 63 countries report internet adoption levels beyond 90 percent.

If you’d like to know more about internet connectivity at a local country level, our Digital 2024 reports are an excellent place to start – click here to learn more.

But despite today’s impressive figures, we’re still a long way from reaching the United Nations’ stated goal of “universal connectivity”, and Kepios’s analysis indicates that more than 2.66 billion people remain offline in April 2024.

In better news, we’ve seen promising gains in internet adoption across some of the least connected countries over recent months, with both Mozambique and Uganda registering double-digital annual gains.

However, internet adoption still languishes below 25 percent in a total of 12 countries, and the internet – at least as the rest of the world knows it – remains entirely blocked for everyday citizens in North Korea.

As part of our Digital 2024 “Deep Dives” in January, we published a comprehensive study of the various barriers to improving internet access, exploring topics such as:

If you’d like to learn more about these issues, I’d strongly urge you to read my complete analysis, together with some recommendations for further reading that you’ll find at the bottom of that linked article.

However, it’s worth highlighting here that low levels of internet use often coincide with more fundamental challenges, such as limited access to electricity and everyday life essentials such as drinking water and basic sanitation.

For related reasons, levels of internet use are still considerably lower in rural areas than they are in urban centres.

Indeed, Kepios analysis suggests that roughly 4 in 5 people living in towns and cities now use the internet, but – at a worldwide level – less than half of the people living in rural areas are online today.

Meanwhile, a stubborn digital gender divide also persists in many parts of the world, and – at a worldwide level – internet adoption amongst men is still 5.4 percentage points higher than it is for women (69.8 percent vs. 64.4 percent, respectively).

However, local divides are often considerably wider than these global figures suggest, especially across the Global South.

For example, our analysis of the latest social media data indicates that nearly twice as many men as women may use the internet across Southern Asia today.

With more than two-thirds of the world now online, it’s worth comparing the use of connected tech with that other great medium of our age: television.

Data from Statista indicates that “conventional” television – i.e. TV content that isn’t delivered via the internet – currently enjoys a global penetration rate of 68.1 percent, which equates to roughly 5.52 billion global TV viewers.

Comparing this penetration rate with the latest figures from GSMA Intelligence reveals that there are already more mobile users than there are TV viewers around the world, which suggests that mobile phones are now the most used devices on the planet.

However, data from Ericsson suggests that 1.1 billion of the 8.3 billion mobile handsets in use today are still “feature” phones (12.8 percent), which helps to explain why internet use still lags the global TV penetration rate by one percentage point.

However, the reach of “conventional” TV is only increasing by fractions of a percentage point each year, while internet penetration has grown by 3.4 percent over the past 12 months.

And as a result, if internet users continue to grow at their current rate, we should see internet penetration surpass that of broadcast TV sometime in the first half of next year.

The latest wave of research from GWI suggests that the world spent less time consuming media in the final three months of 2023 than it did during the same period the year before.

Particularly worthy of note is the fact that the amount of time people spend watching TV has fallen by a further 4 minutes per day over the past year, extending the declines that I detailed in my January analysis.

However, GWI’s research identified a decline across almost all mass media over the past 12 months, with internet use the only media activity to escape an annual drop.

Digital 2024 April Global Statshot Report Analysis

Complementary research can be a helpful tool for marketers looking to reduce trial and error and maximize results. Rather than reinvent the wheel, marketers can lean on readily available data and information to guide their strategies.

Marketing success isn’t just about the most creative campaigns, pretty visuals, and clever copy. It’s also about knowing your audience and understanding the data behind what works and what doesn’t in marketing.

Marketing is part art and part science, and complementary market research can boost the science aspect so the art side has the best chance of resonating with the right people in the right places.

Learn more about complementary research and how to go about using this type of market research to improve your marketing.

How to Conduct Complementary Market Research

Best Practices for Conducting Complementary Market Research

Complementary market research is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. Each type of research — whether it's surveys, focus groups, or data analysis — provides a unique piece of the puzzle. On its own, a single piece may not reveal the full picture, but when you combine multiple pieces from different parts of the puzzle, you start to see a clearer, more comprehensive image.

Others call this secondary research or desk research.

In marketing, an example of complementary market research would be combining quantitative and qualitative data on the same topic. This allows you to learn more about consumer interests, forecasting trends, and gain a more holistic view of the marketplace.

The benefits of conducting complementary market research include:

The ability to make informed decisions based on data-driven insights

Understand complex and evolving industry dynamics

Effectively tailor products and services to the right audiences

Ultimately, complementary market research gives you a more complete picture of your industry and target market.

We can break complementary research into two different types: internal and external.

Internal complementary research comes from your own data. This data might come from:

Customer-generated data (e.g., verbal feedback, surveys, etc.)

This information can give you a competitive edge because your competitors can’t access it. It’s data you already own, which makes it more accessible and cost-effective.

Tip: Learn how Haleon, the world's largest standalone consumer healthcare business, used Meltwater to drastically increase their market research efficiency.

External complementary research refers to data your organization does not own. Research sources may include:

Consumer intelligence platforms like the Meltwater Consumer Intelligence Suite

This type of data works well when you need new insights or information. It can also help you fill in known knowledge gaps or even lead you to questions you haven’t thought to ask.

Complementary market research involves collecting and reviewing data from multiple sources. Here’s how to manage all of the moving parts of this process to get the answers you need.

Complementary research ties to an idea or goal. You have a question that needs answers, so you start sifting through various secondary sources to support it.

Your goal might be to fill knowledge gaps, provide additional context, or validate other findings. Having a clear goal or objective will help you choose your research sources and collect the right information.

Once you know what the needle in the haystack looks like, you can start selecting the right tools to find it. These tools are data that create your knowledge foundation.

For example, let’s say you’re launching a new type of tea and want to learn more about how consumers feel about tropical tea flavors. You can use what you already know about your consumers’ preferences, such as purchasing history, the keywords you already rank for, and online reviews, to guide your research.

Take inventory of your internal and external resources that might already contain this information. For example, did you recently conduct a survey of current customers about which tea flavors they might like to try?

Once you have a baseline idea, you can start adding more data sources to the mix to complement your initial findings.

3. Find complementary sources to complete the picture 

Complementary research should bolster the data you already have. You can choose a variety of sources to cross-reference your findings and get a fuller picture of your idea or topic.

Using our tropical tea flavor example, you might want to validate findings with a focus group, customer feedback surveys, or sampling events.

You might also seek out industry reports or white papers from studies on consumer preferences for flavored teas.

Another helpful tool is a consumer intelligence platform. This technology gauges how consumers think and feel about a variety of topics based on social media and online conversations. These platforms use AI technologies like natural language processing to understand how consumers are talking about a topic.

You can check your website analytics to see which of your current tea products gain the most interest. 

You might also use SEO tools to see how popular online searches are for tropical tea flavors, review customer purchasing patterns, and see how past product launches have performed.

Make a list of all possible secondary market research sources, then decide which ones to include in your project.

Want to learn more about how Meltwater can help you with complementary market research? Simply fill out the form at the bottom of this post and we'll be in touch.

4. Evaluate the credibility of each source

It’s not enough to find data sources that support your ideas — you also need to be able to trust the stories these sources tell. 

Consider the validity of each source, especially if you’re using third-party data. Some ways to do this include:

Knowing where the data comes from (from primary sources when possible)

Learning whether the data was peer-reviewed and looking deeper into that process

Identifying the author and their credibility

Understanding the publisher’s track record

If you can’t trust the data, you won’t be able to use it to help you reach your goals.

Review the information you gathered through your complementary market research sources. Pick out common themes and patterns and determine how they apply to your original objective.

It’s helpful to organize your findings and document the sources they came from. In most cases, research projects will involve multiple stakeholders and several review stages, so this will make it easier to find information later.

Tip: Learn how to increase your organization's speed to insight in our Insight-Driven Marketing Guide.

6. Draw conclusions and make recommendations

Combine your new findings with your baseline information to complete your research picture. This is a good spot to determine whether you have enough information to make recommendations or whether you have more questions or knowledge gaps to fill.

Use your findings to make key decisions, and use your data sources to support those decisions. Share your findings with other stakeholders and communicate the value of the research so you can feel confident in moving forward.

As you go through the complementary market research process, follow these best practices to improve your outcomes:

Identify reliable sources. When you choose solid sources like reputable journals, government reports, or industry insights, you're getting the richest, most reliable data out there. You can also feel more confident sharing those sources with other stakeholders, making you look more credible in the process.

Consider the ethical side of complementary market research. Complementary research often means using someone else’s work, so make sure you properly attribute your findings. Ensure you’re not misleading stakeholders or purposely skewing your findings.

Document your process. You’ll probably need complementary research more than once, so it’s helpful to document how you go about conducting research, vetting sources, and organizing your findings.

Meltwater can help you streamline complementary market research and turn it into a real-time, ongoing process. Our consumer intelligence platform analyzes billions of data points in real time.

Tap into social media, blogs, newspapers, podcasts, and other online and offline media sources to discover trends, competitors, and topics. Get new insights about your audience and answer questions you haven’t thought to ask.

Meltwater serves as a single source of truth for brands around the world, whether you have one office or a multi-location enterprise. Our platform uses a combination of AI and human analysis to turn unstructured data into insights that drive your business forward.

Learn how Meltwater can speed up complementary market research when you request a demo by filling out the form below.

How To Conduct Complementary Market Research

Secondary research companies give you an instant path to insights, offering a shortcut to understanding your customer journey. Rather than set up and conduct resource-intensive studies on your own, these companies pull data from multiple sources to help inform your next best actions.

Also known as desk research companies, secondary research companies help you preserve your time and resources when launching new marketing initiatives. They explore online databases, social media, libraries, industry experts, market research studies, and many other places on your behalf, all with your goals in mind.

Desk research is a fraction of the cost of primary research and can save you time and effort compared with traditional methods. Let’s explore the top secondary market research companies to help you capitalize on readily available data.

What are the Top Secondary Research Companies?

We chose these top secondary research companies based on their focus on desk research and complementary research, approaches, and reputation. Here are the best secondary research companies to start your journey:

Meltwater’s AI-enabled Consumer Intelligence solution is one of the most powerful of its kind, offering insights into brands, consumers, and the media landscape. It puts the power of desk research into your hands, allowing you to command new insights as needed.

What makes Meltwater’s technology stand out is its ability to answer questions you have yet to ask. Using AI, market research expertise, and data science, our platform helps you track topics and trending content, understand audiences, identify new segments and markets, and meet your customers where they are — and you don’t have to know where to start in order to gain these insights. Meltwater recognizes sentiments and how people are discussing various topics, opening the door to new insights and ideas you haven’t yet thought to explore.

With billions of data points updated in real time, users can monitor trends or conduct new desk research whenever they need it. Multiple users can research, collaborate, and share reports of their findings—all from one platform.

Want to learn more about how Meltwater can bolster your secondary market research efforts? Simply fill out the form at the bottom of this post and we'll be in touch.

Specializing in B2B market research, B2B International offers desk research as part of its market research services. They conduct research regarding brand and communications, customer segments, markets, product positioning, and thought leadership to help brands cut through the noise and get in front of their target audiences.

Their secondary research service hinges on quality internet research. They use a combination of libraries, databases, online directories, and similar sources. They’re constantly expanding their resource pool and often combine secondary research with primary research like interviews and surveys to build a comprehensive study.

The Meltwater Blog

Digital 2024 April Global Statshot Report Analysis

How To Conduct Complementary Market Research

Top Secondary Market Research Companies | Desk Research Companies

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