Read a piece in Monocle this morning, during my very long commute, that discusses the fact that Australians are generally believed to be the outdoor type and yet they spend 89.2% of their waking hours consuming media.

Within this piece Monocle broke down internet consumption, with Australia sitting at number five in the top ten nations addicted to their computer screen:

* French users spend 95hrs and 19mins per month online
* US users spend 76hrs and 30mins per month online
* UK users spend 56hrs per month online
* Spanish users spend 50hrs 37mins per month online
* Italian users spend 46hrs and 14 mins per month online
* Australian users spend 41hrs and 20mins per month online
* Japanese users spend 38hrs and 21mins per month 0nline
* German users spend 37hrs and 48mins per month online
* Swiss users spend 37hrs and 11 mins per month online
* Brazilian users spend 37hrs per month online

Brazil was a bit of a shock, sitting above Scandinavian nations was not expected at all.

The IAB published their internet advertising spend findings for the second half of 2008 this morning.

The research showed that entertainment and media over took the usual suspects in terms of advertising spend, making up 16.3% of £3.3 billion spent in the second half of 2008. Importantly retail saw a significant growth in the second half of the year from 6.3% to 9.1%, most probably due to the Christmas period, but still great to see this level of investment.

Click on the link below to see all the findings:

http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/2008internetadvertisingspend010409.html

Back in Jan 2008 Wallpaper* and the IAB worked to together to create the first piece of research looking at the behaviour of luxury consumers online.

This research demonstrated that the age group for luxury consumers online was vastly lower than first thought and that this audience facilitate their lives through the net.

The research split the luxury consumer audience into 3 groups, those that answered yes to 1-2 screening questions, 3 – 4 screening questions and 5 – 8 screening questions. Those that answered 5-8 screening questions were seen as premium luxury consumers.

The premium luxury consumers demonstrated high levels of media consumption including watching high levels of video content online and downloading podcasts regularly.

In summary the research showed that luxury consumers are well versed with the digital landscape, with specific media choices selected and a high consumption of new digital platforms.

Url for the research:
http://www.iabuk.net/media/images/Eye4StrategyFinal_2665.pdf