U.S. Digital Media Usage in 2013: 60% of Internet Users Will Be on Facebook

Remember Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000” sketches? Well, eMarketer is sort of doing its own version of that with its projections for what the digital media landscape will look like in 2013.

Among the findings is that nearly a third of the U.S. population will use tablets, nearly all smartphone users will be mobile Internet users and the Internet user population will grow 2.6 percent.

According to eMarketer’s report, titled “US Digital Media Usage: A Snapshot of 2013” and sponsored by ExactTarget, there will be 245.2 million Internet users in the U.S. next year, up 2.6 percent from the population in 2012. Of this population, 164.2 million, or 67.0 percent, will be social network users, up 4.1 percent year-over-year; 146.7 million, or 59.8 percent, will be Facebook users, up 3.9 percent; and 36.3 million, or 14.8 percent, will be Twitter users, up 14.2 percent.

The Content Marketing Institute recently found that 90 percent of B2C marketers use Facebook to distribute content, followed by 69 percent who use Twitter, 65 percent who use YouTube and 51 percent who use LinkedIn.

In 2013, eMarketer expects 189.6 million Americans to research and browse for products online, up 2.9 percent from 2012. About 82 percent of this population, or 156.1 million people, will be online buyers, up 4.2 percent.

When it comes to mobile usage, eMarketer expects there to be 247.5 million mobile phone users in 2013, up 2.0 percent from 2012. Of this population, there will be 143.8 million mobile Internet users, up 18 percent from 2012. There will be 137.5 million smartphone users in 2013, up 18.8 percent from 2012. According to the report, 95.6 percent of smartphone users will be mobile Internet users next year.

Fifty-six percent of the U.S. Internet population, or 178.7 million users, will be online video viewers next year, up 5.6 percent from 2012. The population of all mobile video viewers will rise 19.8 percent in 2013 to 73.3 million. There will be 70.8 million smartphone video viewers next year, according to eMarketer.

According to a separate study from FreeWheel, online video ad views have grown 49 percent this year. This is attributed to consumers’ growing acceptance of online video ads.

eMarketer also projects 99.0 million tablet users in the U.S. in 2013, or 31 percent of the population and 40.4 percent of Internet users. This would mark a 42.3 percent increase from 2012. More than 7 in 10 tablet users next year will be iPad users, according to the report.

A report from Monetate finds that smartphones and tablets accounted for 18.4 percent of total e-commerce traffic in the third quarter of 2012, up from 7.7 percent in the same period last year. Tablets exhibited a 3.1 percent conversion rate, while smartphones trailed far behind with a 1.0 percent conversion rate.

By Jason Hahn