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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

Influencer marketing is evolving, and so is the way brands measure success. That’s why Meltwater is proud to announce a new partnership with YouTube, integrating YouTube’s Creator Partnerships API directly into our Influencer Marketing platform.

Introducing Verified YouTube Data in Meltwater Influencer Marketing

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

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

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

As critical figureheads, Chief Executive Officers play a key role in how corporations are perceived by the public, and so it's vital that organizations keep their fingers on the pulse of CEO-focused media.

In collaboration with .companion, a data consultancy and KPI expert, Meltwater presents the 2023 CEO Echo; a monthly media intelligence analysis of CEOs heading up some of the world's largest brands. The ranking leverages Meltwater's media intelligence capabilities and automated analysis by the .companion bot to offer readers highlights and benchmarks across the following areas:

Last month, the .companion CEO metrics bot found 15% more CEO menti ons than the average of the previous month's average. Overall, 38% of mentions captured by the CEO Echo were generated by editorial online content, while social media generated 62%. In January, CEO Echo content saw engagement drop by 3%. 38% of all CEO mentions were related to financial news, meaning they simply referred to company figures that are often required to be disclosed by law. In contrast, the context of 62% of mentions was linked to corporate agendas. Overall, the tonality of mentions was more positive than negative.

Bernard Arnault, LVMH CEO, dominates with 19% CEO Echo coverage

What role does a CEO play in a company's overall corporate messaging, whether voluntary or involuntary? The CEO Digital Footprint aims to answer this question.

In January, Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, received the highest amount of media coverage. His share of voice totalled 19.0%, the largest footprint of all top board members. In second place was Simon Thompson, CEO of Royal Mail, with 12.1%, and Oliver Zipse, CEO of BMW, took the third spot with 4.1% share of all mentions. 74% of conversations around Arnault’s echo were not related to company financials, and thus were above average for agenda-driving topics and content. 13% of the LVMH CEO's echo came from editorial media and 87% from social media. Content that mentioned Arnault generated 15 interactions (clicks, shares, likes) per mention. This shows that audiences are highly engaged and made Arnault the 31st most engaged CEO in the ranking. In total, mentions for Bernard Arnault were positive significantly more often than negative. We can assume this had a corresponding impact on his overall reputation.

Ryanair Holdings’ CEO, Michael O'Leary, takes the number 1 spot

Two common goals widely shared by media teams are communicating key messages and building a favorable reputation, both of which rely heavily on editorial mentions. The Communication Excellence ranking analyses and aggregates media volume (removing financial report listings).

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair Holdings, was ranked first in January. Outside of the paywall, 59% of his digital echo discussed the CEO in stories beyond financial figures. Stories generated 1869 engagements per mention, signifying readers are highly interested. Furthermore, coverage was as much positive as it was negative. As a result, the response to Ryanair Holdings’ CEO received 27.2 points. Herbert Eibensteiner, CEO of Voestalpine came in second place with a score of 4.5 and Francesco Starace, CEO of Enel, took third place with a Communication Excellence score of 1.9 points.

Social Excellence 
Toshiaki Higashihara, Hitachi’s CEO, wins first place

These days, simply having a social media profile is not enough. If you want to have an impact on opinion leaders outside of editorial offices, or on consumers and digital elites who are not easily accessible through the mass media, you have to be mentioned frequently on social media. The Social Excellence Index answers whether a company's attempts at this have been successful.

Last month, Toshiaki Higashihara, CEO of Hitachi, topped the ranking with a Social Excellence score of 3.4 points. 82% of the conversation came from social media and his engagement was highly engaged with 14 interactions per mention. Moreover, the sentiments of his mentions were 11% positive, meaning Higashihara was well ahead of runners-up Remi Eriksen, CEO of DNV GL, with 2.5 points and Ester Baiget, CEO of Novozymes, who placed third with 2.4 points.

Francesco Starace, CEO of Enel, has the highest number of mentions surrounding social responsibility

The .companion metrics bot also determines whether CEOs appear in the digital media as leaders in the context of the UN's sustainable development goals, e.g. in the context of social responsibility or climate and environmental protection. Our Responsibility Index shows how well this has been achieved. For this index, the metrics bot only analyses mentions related to sustainability-related topics.

In January, Francesco Starace, CEO of Enel, saluted us from first place in the responsibility ranking, with 40% of Enel CEO's mentions related to social responsibility topics. His engagement rate was 172 which can be considered highly engaged. The tonality of media conversations was more positive than negative. Overall, Starace’s Responsibility Index came to 7.5 points. Ilham Kadri, CEO of Solvay, followed in second place with 3.8 points, and Pekka Lundmark, CEO of Nokia, in third place with 2.3 points.

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam International, takes the number 1 spot for the financial echo

CEO mentions in the context of balance sheet figures offer little scope for setting content-related agendas but are crucial for building investor confidence. In this environment, the metrics bot determines which CEOs were mentioned from a financial standpoint, forming an index for investor communication.

In January, the .companion metrics bot identified Oxfam International's CEO, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, as the top communicator for investors after he achieved 4.4 points. 91% of his mentions were related to the financial environment, which is 1.7 times this month's average. His readership was highly interested, indicated by an engagement rate of 36.6, and he experienced significantly more positive than negative comments. He is followed in second and third place by David Schwimmer, CEO of London Stock Exchange, with 3.3 points and Shayne Nelson, CEO of Emirates NBD (3.0 points).

Media conversations were tracked and analyzed globally with the help of the market-leading monitoring tool, Meltwater

All content is in German and/or English and publicly accessible across websites, forums, and social media

The text and content of the CEO Echo are generated automatically by the .companion metrics bot

All Excellence index values are based on three criteria: 
1. How often the respective CEO is mentioned in a certain context 
2. How many of those mentions were positive
3. How many engagements did those posts and articles received

While it is necessary to have an above-average share of mentions in the respective category it's still possible to score high on a certain index despite one of the sub-criteria receiving results that are somewhat sub-par


For individual evaluation or questions about the KPI bot, please email contact@companion.de 

For a customized report involving any given CEO, please email contact@companion.de.

For further information on Meltwater's brand and reputation management services, including 1-1 advice for your business or the creation of a more advanced brand/CEO media analysis report, simply fill out the form below.

Gain insight into which CEO's are leading today's conversation. Access the dashboard here and filter for CEO, industry, company, or country and get direct get powerful insights visualized in mentions and hashtags.

The CEO Echo | January 2023 Rankings | Categories: Communication, Social, Responsibility & Investor Excellence

X, formerly known as Twitter, can be overwhelming at times. Each time you log in, you’re confronted with an endless stream of tweets that make their way to the top of your timeline faster than you can read them. As a PR pro, you know you should be using X, formerly known as Twitter, to engage with fellow tweeps – but the prospect of finding a relevant profile or conversation among all the noise can be daunting. So, today, I’m going to share how you can use Twitter lists to organize your incoming tweets and engage with the profiles who can directly impact your PR program.

A Few Ideas for Twitter Lists to Get you Started

Now That You Have Twitter Lists, What Do You Do With Them?

Twitter lists are curated groups of Twitter profiles that you can create to group similar users together. Twitter lists allow you to see tweets from only that group of people.

For example, I created a Twitter list of where I’ve grouped all my favorite writers and the publications they write for together. Now I can easily access these people’s tweets and profiles when I’m looking for great content to share on my own X / Twitter account.

You can choose to make your Twitter lists either public or private, depending upon whether you want anyone else to see your list. Public Twitter lists are great if you want to recognize the individual profiles on your list for being superstars – they can see that you’ve added them to the list, and others can subscribe to the list to receive content from those you’ve included. Private Twitter lists are better if you don't want your competitors to have access to the information; for example, if it contained customers or media friendlies.

Media Friendlies: Go back to your recent press mentions and follow. Add each journalist’s Twitter profile to a “media friendlies” list so you can maintain your existing relationships with those that have covered your business. Assuming that their normal beat is related to the article they wrote about you, they should have plenty of mutual ground that you can chat about, as well as interesting content you can share with your followers. Maintaining your relationship with media friendlies in this way can keep you top of mind when they need a subject matter expert to weigh in on an article they’re writing, or when you have a story you’d like to share with them.


Industry Journalists: Also do a search on your competitors’ recent press mentions and recent industry news articles and follow/ add those journalists to a separate list. Again, these journalists should have plenty of relevant content that you can engage with which can help you build a relationship with a journalist you haven’t met. You may also want to break this group down into several lists, perhaps by geography, beat, or past interaction (ie media friendlies). Some PR pros prefer to create a list for a specific story they'd like to pitch in the future – say an IPO – thus they target journalists that have covered related IPOs in their industry. By creating a relationship with them on X, formerly known as Twitter, your pitch may be more well-received – just make sure that you’ve used Twitter to add value for that journalist and that you start building these relationships well ahead of time.


Industry Bloggers: These days, anyone can be a publisher and you can benefit from treating bloggers like journalists to get targeted coverage for your stories. As with industry journalists, you may want to break this group of Twitter profiles down into more specific lists – such as the specific topic they write about, bloggers that speak at events, where they’re located geographically, etc. This will help you keep your content stream very focused, which will make it easier for you to interact with your listed tweeps.

The name of the game is engagement. View your X / Twitter lists on a regular basis and respond to tweets shared by those on your list. It's also wise to retweet their content so your followers can see too. Stay on the lookout for journalists and bloggers asking for subject matter expertise within their network – this will help you position yourself as the go-to person when that writer needs more information for a story. A simple way you can do this is by looking out for hashtags such as #mediarequest and #prrequest. Above all else, make sure you’re creating value for the journalist or blogger with the tweets and content you share. Moreover, by extending the reach of their content, or providing sources for their articles, you're better placed to build and maintain a meaningful online relationship that can be mutually beneficial for years to come.

If you're tired of seeing a string of irrelevant tweets, Twitter lists tidy up your feed so you can cut through the noise and read the tweets that will bring you the most value. Hopefully by now you have a better understanding of the importance of Twitter lists and how you can create them to nurture relevant profiles and build relationships on social media. 

Using Twitter Lists for Better PR

The data analysts at the heart of the organization

Consumers have changed. And with that change, modern brands have embraced a new form of consumer insights based on social media intelligence to get to know their customers in real time, at the speed of the Web. In large organizations, this now means that Consumer and Market Insights and their teams of data analysts are in charge of letting the data do the talking. Their key mission is to provide people across the organization with key insights that will inform any decision making processes.

To achieve real competitive advantage, we need to ensure data is at the heart of everything we do. From marketing and consumer insights to IT, all departments must work closely together and leverage the power of data.

says Global Consumer Insights Director; Pernod Ricard, Florence Rainsard.

But as organizations put the customers at the center of everything, Data analysts are pressured to find pearls of insights within growing datasets while ensuring they don’t miss any essential insights. This is made increasingly more difficult as datasets grow. From data scarcity a decade ago, brands and CMI teams are now at risk of drowning into too much data. 

To this point, Statista predicts a continued surge in the volume of data created, hitting 90 zettabytes by 2022 and doubling by 2025. With the vast amount of data created daily, analysts face the huge challenge of deep diving into various data sets to draw valuable insights and inform business decisions.

Manipulating these fast-growing data sets takes a lot of time for analysts. Consequently, a huge amount of data is not analyzed due to the lack of time, resources and manpower dedicated to data analysis and this implies that potential actionable insights are being lost.

Mike Gualtieri, VP, Principal Analysts at Forrester says: 

"On average, between 60% and 73% of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics. That's unacceptable in an age where deeper, actionable insights, especially about customers, are a competitive necessity."

This is where AI comes in, allowing us to perform deep analyses at scale.

Tip: Learn how Meltwater uses AI and check out Meltwater’s AI Writing Assistant

Introducing Discovery BETA, our brand new AI-based Insight Assistant 

Today, we’re excited to introduce Discovery BETA, our new AI-based Insight Assistant, following months of successful private beta tests with a number of our clients. 

Discovery BETA is the powerful engine that analysts need to assist them while exploring their data sets more systematically and efficiently, resulting in greater time savings and improved data analysis quality. By running multiple proprietary algorithms automatically on their datasets 24x7, Discovery BETA does the heavy lifting for them and ensures they find insights they might have otherwise missed, making them aware of unusual changes and shifts in order to deep dive into them to validate / invalidate those changes. 

"Discovery helped us find a rapidly growing event that we were not aware of. It can help us to save lot of time when we need to understand what’s trendy at the moment, particularly activities initiated by consumers or competitors."

Yunhui Zhou
Senior Social Listening Planner
Pernod Ricard

Today, on its first version, Discovery BETA takes the form of a stream of learnings built on the fly, displaying cards that will highlight what has been detected by the system. It analyzes the displayed queries of a workspace, in order to highlight for instance: 

a hashtag, keyword or an emotion that has been spreading for a few days

 For each learning highlighted by the system you’ll get several interesting things:

A sentence explaining the context of this learning so that you can easily understand why this has popped up.

An access to a detailed view so that you can deep dive into this learning and confirm if this is an important insight to look at.

You’ll have the possibility to save this detailed view in a new or existing insight page to keep monitoring the trend during the next days or months.

You’ll be able to share this page or a snapshot of this page as like any other insight pages to disseminate this insight to other team members. 

Why is this fundamental for data analysts?

"Discovery is a fascinating feature, both for its ability to identify relevant information and for its accuracy. It simplifies the task of analyzing and identifying drivers of conversations with completeness and relevance. The potential of Discovery is immense, and it’s a major asset for anyone involved in social data."

Jean-Baptiste Mac Luckie
Senior Market & Business Insights Manager
Lacoste

"Discovery is very easy to use and perfect for marketers and strategic teams to focus on the most relevant information without requiring analytical skills, saving time and encouraging capability adoption."

Angela Vicente Moreno
Global Digital Insights & Analytics Excellence Manager
Bayer

The main benefit for analysts will be to save a huge amount of time:

exploring their data set as Discovery BETA points out any change in statistical patterns to facilitate their day-to-day work

understanding these learnings as it provides the necessary context to better understand why this learning popped up


"This new and powerful feature allows our analysts to save a tremendous amount of time."
Delphine Gandarinho
Deputy Head of the Press Office
Ministère de l'Economie, des Finances et de la Souveraineté Industrielle et Numérique

It’s also a huge help for data analysts to ensure to discover insights they might have otherwise missed. That way, they are pretty confident in the fact that they are providing all insights needed to inform their organization’s decision making.

Moreover, it leverages our proprietary Insight Pages Technology to visualize, provide a deep dive of the analysis and disseminate the insights. Clicking on a card will generate an insight page on the fly detailing the specific data point. You will be able to save this page as an Insight Page in order to keep monitoring a detected trend or to share it across other teams.

Coupled with an advanced data structuring, our new AI-based Insight Assistant, will allow you to have a very strong consumer intelligence program allowing to surface rich, deep and powerful insights without spending hours and hours to analyze the data. Your day-to-day life will be easier than even!

What kind of algorithms is Discovery based on?

Being analysts ourselves for a long time, we know how critical it is to find relevant pearls of insight. That’s why we wanted to focus our first efforts developing useful advanced algorithms.  Detecting emerging terms that were not trending before in your data set is one of the most advanced algorithms available on the market. Thanks to this algorithm, the system is able to detect terms like keyphrases, names, entities, hashtags, affects or even emotions, topics that were not trending before. It’s a huge help for analysts to point out new trends or even a bad buzz as it is able to detect positive or negative posts. 

Our advanced algorithms also offer brand new capabilities to see at a glance clusters of images thanks to our brand new Computer Vision capabilities that we integrated directly into our new DiscoveryBETA tool. 

We also offer algorithms like detection of volume spikes to spot volume changes, either negative or positive, that occurred within your dataset, and also identify viral posts that are highly engaging. 

And this is just the beginning! We’re already developing more algorithms to expand the scope of Discovery BETA. As we do, its technology will grow and learn to highlight more and more relevant and actionable insights, so that you can perform smarter, better, and faster at work. In short, your assistant will grow to be smarter and smarter. 

Get your free demo today by filling out the form:

Introducing the beta of Discovery, our brand new AI-based Insight Assistant

Over the past twelve months, the world’s digital behaviours have shown some of the most profound changes we’ve seen in years, even compared with “the pandemic years”.

The latest research reveals that these behaviours are evolving in a number of unexpected ways, too.

Fortunately however, our huge new Digital 2023 Global Overview Report – produced in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social – has all the data and insights you need to make sense of the latest trends.

Tip: Take a look at the full Global Digital Report 2023, The Global State of Digital in April 2023, The Global State of Digital in July 2023, and the Digital 2023 October Global Statshot Report.

Top stories in our flagship Digital 2023 report include:

A big change in global internet user numbers

An intriguing decline in various aspects of online activity

Rich insights into evolving social media platform preferences

Changes in the devices that people use to access digital content and services

Some unexpected changes in the world’s online search behaviours

The startling growth of digital advertising

That’s barely a fraction of what you’ll find in the full report though, which is packed with 400+ charts exploring what people are really doing on the internet, social media, mobile devices, and online shopping platforms.

And in addition to the 10,000 words of rich context and insight that you’ll find in this article, we’ve also produced a selection of deep-dive articles to take you even further into this year’s data, so look out for links to those “bonus” resources throughout this analysis.

This year’s report is by far the biggest collection of data and trends that we’ve ever published, and that increased breadth and depth is all thanks to the support of our amazing partners.

First up, I’d like to say a very big thank you to Meltwater, who’ve joined us as a headline Global Digital Reports partner this year. Meltwater is a global leader in social and media intelligence dedicated to helping businesses monitor, understand, and influence the world around them.

I’d also like to thank We Are Social for continuing their support of the Global Digital Reports series into an impressive twelfth year. We Are Social is a socially led creative agency that puts social thinking at the centre of marketing.

These two partners make the Global Digital Reports series possible, so please let them know on social media if you find these reports valuable:

I’d also like to offer my heartfelt thanks our wonderful data partners, without whom the Global Digital Reports series would be a lot less informative:

Just before we start exploring the numbers, I’d encourage you to review our detailed notes on data to understand how changes in sources and methodologies have impacted this year’s numbers. 

In particular, please note the following:

Internet users: the complexities of researching and reporting internet adoption around the world mean that there is invariably a delay in publishing the most recent data. As a result, figures for internet use after 2021 likely under-represent reality, and actual user numbers and growth figures may be meaningfully higher than the figures shown in this year’s reports.

Social media users: significant revisions to the figures published by various platforms mean that the social media user numbers included in this year’s reports are not directly comparable with figures published in our previous reports. We use data published in the advertising resources of a number of the world’s top social media platforms to inform our figures for overall social media use, and any changes in that source data can impact our overall figures too. As a result, please note that – in many cases – the figures we’ve included for social media users in this year’s reports will appear lower than the figures we included in previous reports. However, these revisions do not imply an actual change in overall use, and our analysis has not detected any discernible decline in overall social media adoption.

These aren’t the only changes impacting this year’s numbers though, so do check out the complete list of updates in our more detailed notes on data.

But with that, let’s get into the findings.

I’d recommend starting with this video, which will help you understand all of this year’s top headlines and trends in just 10 minutes.

Once you’ve finished watching that, read on below for the full report.

You’ll find the complete report in the embed below (click here if that’s not working for you), but continue reading past that to find our comprehensive analysis of what all these numbers mean for you and your work.

Let’s start with a look at the latest headlines for the global “state of digital”:

The world’s population passed 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and has reached 8.01 billion at the start of 2023. Just over 57 percent of the world’s population now lives in urban areas.

A total of 5.44 billion people use mobile phones in early 2023, equating to 68 percent of the total global population. Unique mobile users have increased by just over 3 percent during the past year, with 168 million new users over the past 12 months.

There are 5.16 billion internet users in the world today, meaning that 64.4 percent of the world’s total population is now online. Data show that the global internet user total increased by 1.9 percent over the past 12 months, but delays in data reporting mean that actual growth will likely be higher than this figure suggests.

There are now 4.76 billion social media users around the world, equating to just under 60 percent of the total global population. Social media user growth has slowed over recent months though, with this year’s net addition of 137 million new users equating to annual growth of just 3 percent.

These headlines offer an excellent snapshot of digital use around the world, but we need to dig deeper into the data to understand how people’s behaviours are actually evolving.

And the good news is that we’ve got loads of great data to explore…

Over the past few weeks, two of the world’s top authorities on the state of global connectivity – the ITU and GSMA Intelligence – have revised their figures for internet use around the world.

These revisions have enabled us to make significant updates to our internet user figures too, and our latest global total now sits at 5.16 billion.

That’s quite a bit higher than the 5.07 billion figure that we reported just in October 2022, but it’s important to stress that internet users haven’t actually increased by 90 million in just the past three months.

Indeed, our analysis of the most recent data indicates that internet users have actually only grown by 98 million over the past twelve months.

That translates to year-on-year growth of just under 2 percent, which is markedly slower than the growth rates that we saw during the 2010s.

As I explained in the “important notes on data” section above though, figures for the most recent year or two invariably under-represent actual growth in internet users, because of how long it takes to conduct, process, and report internet user research.

However – even if we allow for these reporting delays – Kepios analysis of the latest data still indicates that user growth has indeed slowed over recent months.

It’s worth stressing that this deceleration is to be expected though, especially now that more than 6 in 10 people on Earth already use the internet.

And despite the recent slowdown, current trends suggest that close to two-thirds of the world’s population should be online by the end of 2023.

Tip: Download the full Global Digital Report 2023 here.

But digital use still varies meaningfully around the world.

At the top end of the rankings, internet adoption rates now either equal or exceed 99 percent in a total of 8 countries, while a total of 55 countries now enjoy internet adoption rates in excess of 90 percent [note that we cap internet adoption rates at 99 percent].

But in what might come as a surprise to some readers, internet adoption across Northern America actually falls below internet adoption across the European Union and the UK.

Analysis by the ITU indicates that 91.8 percent of the population of the United States is online today, which ranks the country just 45th at a global level [note that the chart below only shows data for a selection of larger economies].

Furthermore, Northern America only accounts for 6.7 percent of the world’s total internet population.

So, while American digital trends invariably have an impact on the rest of the world, it’s important to stress that digital habits in the United States are rarely representative of those that we see in other countries.

As a result, it’s critical to dig into the local country data to understand what’s really happening amongst the specific audiences that you’re hoping to reach and engage.

At the other end of the connectivity spectrum, North Korea continues to languish in last place in the global rankings, with the internet still blocked for everyday citizens in the reclusive North Asian state.

Meanwhile, data indicate that less than 10 percent of the populations of South Sudan and Somalia use the internet today, placing these nations just above North Korea at the bottom of the global rankings.

The Meltwater Blog

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