Digital 2024 October Global Statshot Report

Reports

Another quarter for big online milestones. Here, Kepios founder Simon Kemp takes us through the updates in our latest Digital 2024 report.

2024 has been a year packed with impressive digital milestones, and that trend shows no signs of slowing as we enter the final quarter of the year.

As we’ll explore in detail in this extensive analysis, our new Digital 2024 October Global Statshot Report – published in partnership between We Are Social and Meltwater – has big new numbers for overall digital adoption, for some of the world’s top social media platforms, and for various connected behaviours.

Top stories in this quarter’s update to our Global Digital Reports series include:

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.

The ultimate collection of digital data

This quarter’s reports feature an exceptional wealth of data and insight, thanks to the support and generosity of our wonderful data partners:

Content authenticity 

All of this analysis was written by a human, without the use of generative AI [click here to learn why this matters]. Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

⚠️ Important notes

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

  1. The United Nations published a comprehensive update to its World Population Prospects data in recent weeks, and this update included some important revisions to population numbers around the world. In addition to impacting the figures that we report for population, these revisions may also affect any data point where we show digital adoption or activity as a percentage of the total population (e.g. internet and social media adoption), or as a percentage of a specific age group within the broader population (e.g. people aged 18 and above). As a consequence, any comparisons with equivalent data points published in the Global Digital Reports series prior to the current October 2024 report may result in unexpected trends, including apparent decreases in user figures or activity. However, any such change may be solely the result of changes in (and revisions to) underlying population data, and may not necessarily indicate any change in actual digital adoption or behaviour. As a result, we advise significant caution when interpreting any changes in values that show digital adoption or activity as a percentage of the population. For more details, please see our comprehensive notes on data.
  2. The growth in X’s published ad reach between July 2024 and October 2024 is surprisingly similar across almost all countries, with 222 out of 231 included territories seeing a growth rate of between +0.7% and +0.8%. Our analysis of third-party data suggests that these changes in X’s own ad reach figures may not accurately represent changes in X use over time, so we advise significant caution when interpreting X’s latest ad reach data.

The complete Digital 2024 October Global Statshot Report

You’ll find this quarter’s main 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 October 2024

Let’s start by exploring the latest headlines for digital adoption and use around the world:

Internet use reaches another big milestone

Kepios analysis indicates that more than 5½ billion people around the world are using the internet in October 2024.

This figure reflects the latest data from a number of reputable sources, including internet adoption figures from the ITU and local regulatory authorities, mobile internet subscriber data from GSMA Intelligence, survey data from Eurostat, and user data from a variety of digital platforms.

Trends in this data indicate that digital adoption continues to grow too, albeit at a somewhat slower pace than we’ve seen in recent reports.

The current user total has increased by 2.8 percent since this time last year, although it’s worth noting that recent revisions to the United Nations’ world population data (as detailed above) may have impacted this growth figure.

For perspective, data indicate that internet users grew slightly faster – by 2.9 percent –between October 2022 and October 2023, while the figure for the previous year (2021 to 2022) was almost double the current figure, at 5.5 percent.

Nonetheless, these latest numbers indicate that more than 151 million people came online for the first time over the past 12 months, at an average rate of 4.8 new users every second.

Moreover, the complexities of collecting internet user data mean that the most recent figures often under-represent actual internet adoption, so we expect to see an upward “correction” in these latest growth figures as more data becomes available over the coming months.

Meanwhile, internet penetration (i.e. internet users as a percentage of total population) has increased by a relative 1.9 percent over the past year.

That growth is encouraging, but – similar to the trends we saw above – this latest increase is slightly below the 2.0 percent figure that we saw for growth between October 2022 and October 2023.

Note that growth in the user total is partly fuelled by an increase in total population (i.e. there are more people in the world today than there were this time last year), which explains why the user total appears to be growing at a faster rate than the penetration figure.

Please also be aware that we regularly revise our historical internet user data, so the figures you see on these charts likely won’t match or correlate with figures that we published in previous updates to the Global Digital Reports series. 

Second only to sleep

Turning our attention to internet behaviours, the latest research from GWI reveals that the typical internet user now spends 6 hours and 36 minutes per day online.

This “connected time” includes a variety of activities – from watching Netflix and listening to Spotify, to online shopping and work-related activities – but this diversity doesn’t detract from the gravity of this finding.

Indeed, this daily average means that we now spend a total of more than 46 hours using the internet each week, which is 15 percent more than more than a “typical” working week of 40 hours.

For perspective, the latest research from YouGov indicates that most people sleep for between 7 and 8 hours a day, so GWI’s latest figures for daily internet activity suggest that people spend roughly 40 percent of their waking lives online.

In other words, for many people, connected activities account for the greatest “share of life” after sleep.

Mobile internet use reaches new heights

Despite already being our most-used devices, mobile phones continue to play an ever more important role in our connected lives.

The latest data from Statcounter shows that mobiles now account for more than 60 percent of global web traffic, after a somewhat unexpected dip in share towards the end of last year.

Mobile’s share of global web traffic has remained above 60 percent since May of this year, and even surpassed 62 percent in August 2024, before flipping back slightly in September.

It’s not unusual to see meaningful fluctuations in these share figures over time, but the overall trends point to mobile’s steadily increasing dominance.

Nevertheless, Statcounter’s data shows that some countries are still heavily reliant on computers when it comes to web activity.

For example, mobile devices account for less than 30 percent of web traffic in Denmark, and mobiles are also a clear second choice in Switzerland, Japan, and Sweden.

Reassuringly, this Statcounter data echoes trends we see in GWI’s research, which finds that people in Japan and Denmark are amongst the least likely to use mobile devices to go online, together with people in Canada and the UK.

Similarly, GWI’s data shows that mobiles account for less than half of connected time across all four of these countries.

Speedy cellular

The case for mobile internet is increasingly compelling however, especially with the latest Speedtest data from Ookla showing that the median speed of mobile internet connections continues to increase.

For clarity, these figures refer to the speed of cellular data networks, and do not include WiFi access on mobile devices.

At a worldwide level, the typical mobile user now enjoys download speeds of 55.8 Mbps, with that figure jumping by almost 30 percent since this time last year.

Impressively, users in a total of 17 countries now enjoy median mobile download speeds in excess of 100 Mbps, while figures in the UAE and Qatar look set to break the 400 Mbps mark in the next few months.

However, users in various countries still struggle with “laggy” connections, with Ookla reporting that median download speeds remain below 10 Mbps in both Yemen and Afghanistan.

Users in Latin America often contend with slow connections too, with median cellular bandwidth still stuck below 20 Mbps in Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and Paraguay.

Mobile isn’t necessarily an “inferior” choice though, and mobile connections now outpace fixed internet speeds in a total of 34 countries around the world, with users in Suriname experiencing the greatest gap in favour of cellular data connections.

ChatGPT charges ahead

The latest intelligence from data.ai reveals that use of the ChatGPT mobile app has surged over recent weeks, with the app ranking amongst the top ten “breakout” apps by monthly active users between June and August 2024.

“Breakout apps” are those that delivered the largest absolute increases in the relevant metric during the analysis period, so this data provides clear evidence that ChatGPT continues to gain solid momentum, nearly two years after its public launch.

It’s worth highlighting that TikTok and Instagram both added more active users during this same three-month period, but the fact that ChatGPT ranks alongside apps of that size will be particularly encouraging for the OpenAI team.

ChatGPT also placed tenth in data.ai’s ranking of the biggest gainers by download volume, so there’s every chance that we’ll see those active user figures continue to grow over the coming months too.

But it’s not just data.ai’s figures that point to sustained ChatGPT growth.

Similarweb’s data shows that more than a quarter of a billion unique visitors went to ChatGPT.com each month between June and August, resulting in an average of 2.5 billion total site visits per month.

Trends over time look encouraging too, with Similarweb reporting that worldwide site traffic increased by 8 percent between July and August 2024.

Meanwhile, Semrush reports even higher figures, with unique visitor numbers at 392 million for August 2024, and total site visits at 3.1 billion.

Semrush’s growth figures for ChatGPT.com are more modest though, with the traffic analysts reporting an increase of just over 3 percent between July and August 2024.

CashGPT

However, user figures aren’t the only ChatGPT metrics catching our attention this quarter.

data.ai’s breakout tables also show that ChatGPT was one of the top three gainers in terms of consumer spend on non-game apps between June and August 2024, and the company’s app now ranks amongst the world’s top 20 revenue-earning non-game apps.

Those revenue figures have grown quickly too, with data.ai’s figures pointing to quarterly growth of more than 60 percent.

For perspective, the levels of consumer spend are still modest for a company that is now valued at close to USD $160 billion, but consumer in-app revenues only represent a tiny fraction of the ChatGPT opportunity, especially when compared with potential enterprise sales.

Indeed, The Information reports that OpenAI was already earning USD $3.4 billion in annualised revenue just a few months ago, with the company’s run-rate doubling from the figure it reported just a few months prior.

Nevertheless, the fact that individuals are already spending tens of millions of dollars per month to use ChatGPT’s premium services on their mobile devices is testament to the momentum that the platform has gained.

Multiple choice

But ChatGPT isn’t the only AI service that’s been gaining momentum over recent weeks, even if the available data suggest that it’s still the clear leader.

The same data.ai “breakout” dataset shows that Google Gemini was one of the top three gainers in terms of app downloads between June and August 2024, while Character.AI was one of the top gainers in terms of total time spent.

However, data suggest that ChatGPT’s mobile app now has roughly 10 times as many monthly active users as Google Gemini’s mobile app, and almost 11 times as many as Microsoft Copilot.

Having said that, both Gemini and Copilot are integrated into their respective parent company’s broader services (e.g. Gmail and Microsoft Office, respectively), so comparing mobile app use perhaps doesn’t offer the most representative insight into the adoption of these services.

Indeed, even when it comes to standalone services, data suggests that people are more likely to use AI platforms in a web browser than they are to use the equivalent mobile app.

ChatGPT remains the clear leader on the web too though, with Similarweb’s data suggesting that chatgpt.com has almost five times as many unique monthly visitors as gemini.google.com, and more than 25 times as many unique monthly visitors as copilot.microsoft.com, perplexity.ai, and claude.ai.

A whole new game

These AI adoption and use figures make for interesting reading, but it’s essential to highlight that – in many cases – AI is more of an underlying technology, and less of a “destination” in the way that platforms like YouTube and Facebook are.

Of course, marketers will still want to keep an eye on adoption and use figures to understand where trends are headed, especially when it comes to services like Perplexity AI, which may reshape online search.

However, given the ways in which people and businesses use AI services, these technologies likely require a different set of measurement metrics to social media platforms and video streaming services.

Vietnam enters the 100 million club

The United Nations’ recently revised data shows that Vietnam is now home to more than 100 million people, making it the sixteenth country to reach a nine-figure population.

Roughly 4 in 5 people in Vietnam (78.8 percent) use the internet today, but once Vietnamese people come online, they’re often quick to embrace digital innovations.

For example, Vietnam ranks highly for the use of voice assistants, for making video calls, and for investing in cryptocurrency.

Vietnamese internet users are also some of the most active online shoppers, with data from GWI indicating that almost 6 in 10 adult internet users in the country (59 percent) make at least one online purchase every week.

Similarly, nearly three-quarters of Vietnam’s adult internet users (74.1 percent) say that they pay for some kind of digital content each month.

This may be partly explained by the fact that the country is home to some of the world’s most ardent gamers, with GWI’s data also revealing that a hefty 94 percent of Vietnamese internet users play video games, ranking the country third out of GWI’s 53 surveyed countries.

However, Vietnamese people are considerably less likely to spend their time watching television, with GWI’s data placing the country last out of the 53 surveyed countries, at an average of just 2 hours and 12 minutes per day.

Interestingly though, when Vietnamese people do watch television, they’re much more likely to turn to streaming services, with OTT platforms accounting for more than half of the country’s TV viewing time.

It’s also interesting to note that Vietnamese internet users over-index when it comes to digital health and wellbeing.

For example, more than a quarter of Vietnam’s connected population aged 16 to 64 says that they use a digital health or fitness service each month, while an impressive 86.5 percent of this demographic say that online resources are an important source of information when choosing treatments for everyday ailments like headaches and colds.

Vietnamese internet users are also heavy users of VPNs, with GWI’s data ranking the country fifth for use of these tools.

However, the popularity of VPNs in Vietnam doesn’t appear to be driven by privacy concerns, with the country appearing in the lowest quartile when it comes to netizens’ concerns about how companies might use their personal data online.

And lastly for this section, social media remains a big draw for Vietnam’s online communities, with Kepios’s latest analysis ranking the country sixth in terms of the share of internet users who use at least one social media platform each month.

Time spent on social media declines

Yet more valuable data from GWI reveals that the amount of time people spend on social media has been declining steadily over recent months.

The typical internet user’s daily social media activity has fallen by 8.6 percent over the past couple of years, from a high of 2 hours and 31 minutes in Q3 2022, to 2 hours and 19 minutes in the current Q2 2024 survey wave.

That 12-minute decline has resulted in the lowest average we’ve seen during the past six years, although it’s important to acknowledge that GWI’s addition of audiences aged 65 and above in the previous survey wave has accelerated recent declines.

However, even if we remove those new audiences, the latest average would still be the second-lowest we’ve seen since Q2 2018.

And GWI’s data suggests that declines have been relatively consistent across all age groups over recent months too, so this isn’t a case of one demographic skewing the overall average.

However, in more encouraging news for social media fans, GWI’s data also shows that the number of people who worry they spend “too much” time on social media has also been declining steadily over recent months.

Indeed, the latest share of global respondents who agree with that statement – 26.6 percent – is the lowest we’ve seen since this question first appeared in GWI’s survey at the end of 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of respondents who say that they think social media is “good for society” has increased to new heights, with 37.5 percent of respondents agreeing with this statement in the latest survey wave.

So, while marketers will certainly want to keep an eye on the time that their audiences spend using social media, my interpretation of these various trends is that we may be seeing a move towards more “discerning” use of social media across all age groups, perhaps as part of a more conscious effort to avoid “mindless scrolling”.

Social media adoption increases

And in contrast to the decline in time spent, the latest data indicates that more people than ever are using social media platforms today.

Kepios’s analysis of activity across a wide variety of social media platforms indicates that there are now 5.22 billion active social media user identities in the world, with that figure increasing by more than 250 million over the past year.

It’s important to highlight that the user figures reported by these platforms may involve some level of duplication, and – as the platforms themselves acknowledge – they may also inadvertently include a number of fake and false accounts.

However, by triangulating platforms’ own data with reputable third-party intelligence from GWI, data.ai, Similarweb, and Semrush, we’re confident that the current 5.22 billion figure is highly representative of actual global social media adoption. 

It’s also interesting to note that social media adoption appears to have accelerated over the past 12 months, as compared with growth rates for the previous two years.

Our ongoing analysis indicates that global social media user identities increased by 5.2 percent between October 2023 and October 2024, which is the fastest rate we’ve seen since 2021.

Countries in Africa and Central Asia have seen some of the fastest growth in social media adoption over recent months, although it’s important to note that overall adoption is still quite low in many of these countries.

In absolute terms, Indonesia has seen particularly impressive growth over recent months, largely thanks to a surge in the use of TikTok.

Indeed, figures published in Bytedance’s advertising tools indicate that Indonesia is now home to the world’s largest TikTok audience, with the company reporting ad reach of more than 165 million in the South-East Asian nation of 284 million people.

It’s worth noting that Bytedance’s tools only report ad reach for users aged 18 and above, so the company’s latest figures would mean more than 82 percent of Indonesian adults now use TikTok each month.

However, our analysis of the available data indicates that user “age misstatements” (e.g. people below the age of 18 claiming to be older) may impact this figure, although there’s no easy way to quantify the extent of this potential distortion.

It’s also important to stress that age misrepresentation is a critical consideration across all social media platforms, and TikTok is by no means alone in experiencing such issues.

Social search on the rise

In addition to growing user numbers, marketers will also be interested to learn that social search appears to be gaining momentum.

The latest research from GWI indicates that more people than ever are using social networks for brand research, with 46.1 percent of global survey respondents saying that they turn to these platforms when looking for information about brands and products that they’re considering buying.

Consumers in Africa are the most ardent “social searchers”, with more than 87 percent of survey respondents in Nigeria and Ghana responding in the affirmative.

However, social search is also a key consideration across Latin America and South-East Asia, with more than half of adult internet users across both regions saying that they use social networks to research potential purchases.

Women are more likely than men to use social networks for research, but the figures show that social research is still a key consideration for brands hoping to reach and engage male consumers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger generations are the most likely to research brands on social networks, but more than 1 in 3 consumers aged 55 to 64 also say that they turn to these platforms when they’re exploring potential purchases.

QR codes are finally mainstream

In one of the stealthiest digital ascents we’ve seen over the past 15 years, QR codes have [finally!] gone “mainstream” this quarter, with more than half of the world’s adult internet users saying that they’ve scanned one of these images within the past month.

Furthermore, the share of internet users interacting with QR codes has increased meaningfully over the past couple of years, from 44.3 percent in Q2 2022, to 50.5 percent in Q2 2024.

Countries in Asia and Latin America see the highest levels of QR code use, although it’s interesting to find Switzerland in second place in the latest ranking, just behind China.

In contrast, people across many parts of Europe and North America seem to be less enamoured with camera-based web navigation, with both the USA and the UK languishing near the bottom of the current ranking.

However, in something of another surprise, young people do not appear to be the primary source of QR codes’ recent momentum.

Indeed, GWI’s data shows that people aged 35 to 54 are actually more likely to interact with QR codes than people ages 18 to 34 are.

Threads is gaining momentum

Since its launch in July 2023, Meta’s newest platform – Threads – has enjoyed somewhat mixed fortunes.

The app arrived to much fanfare, with statistics suggesting it had enjoyed the fastest launch of any mobile app in history.

That early momentum quickly evaporated though, and app downloads fell by 80 percent between July and September 2023.

However, Zuck and team appear to have turned things around since then, and various data points suggest that Threads is now delivering promising growth.

Meta’s ad tools don’t currently offer any insight into the platform’s potential reach, but third-party intelligence from data.ai (now a Sensor Tower company) suggests that more than a quarter of a billion users opened the Threads mobile app in August 2024.

That total already marks a meaningful milestone in Threads’ ongoing growth, but the platform’s user growth figures are even more compelling.

Active user numbers reported by data.ai increased by more than 10 percent in both July and August this year, and Kepios’s own analysis suggests that we may see similar growth rates in September 2024 too.

These figures are enough to place Threads in data.ai’s ranking of the fastest growing apps by monthly active users, with the platform adding even more users than ChatGPT over the past three months.

Threads growth in context

Few would deny that a quarter of a billion monthly active users is an impressive achievement, but that figure still isn’t enough to qualify for the top 15 social media platforms by active users.

For perspective, Pinterest currently takes fifteenth spot in that ranking, with 522 million monthly active users – more than double Threads’ latest total.

Meanwhile, intelligence from data.ai indicates that both LinkedIn and Discord also have larger active user bases than Threads does.

Moreover, despite rapidly increasing user numbers, the average time that each user spends using the Threads Android app – 34 minutes per month – is still considerably lower than figures we see for similar platforms.

For comparison, X users spend an average of 5 hours and 19 minutes per month using the platform’s Android app, which is more than 9 times longer than the equivalent figure for Threads.

While we’re on the subject of the platform formerly known as Twitter, it’s increasingly difficult to identify how many people actually use X each month [more on that topic later in this analysis], but figures point to somewhere in the region of 600 million monthly active user accounts, which is well over double Threads’ current total.

For added perspective, the typical TikTok user spends more than 60 times longer using TikTok’s Android app each month than the typical Threads user spends using the Threads Android app.

However, these two platforms have completely different use cases, so this is perhaps an unfair comparison.

But Threads is still a long way behind its closest sibling too, with Instagram users spending as much time using that app each day as Threads users spend using the Threads app each month.

Having said that, data.ai’s figures show that the monthly time spent using the Threads Android app has increased by roughly 50 percent over the past quarter, from an average of 22 minutes per user in May, to 34 minutes per user in August 2024.

Perhaps most importantly though, Threads hasn’t yet become a “daily habit” for many users.

Fewer than 1 in 4 of the app’s active users opens the platform’s Android app each day, and only LinkedIn sees a lower frequency of app use amongst the top Western social platforms.

However, data.ai’s figures point to steady growth in this metric too, so – despite its current “underdog” status – it seems that Threads is increasingly a force to be reckoned with.

Meta still dominates social

But despite its growing popularity, Threads is still only a very small part of Meta’s social empire.

The company’s most recent (Q2 2024) investor earnings report states that 3.27 billion people use at least one of its apps every day, while Meta’s ad planning tools report that ads across the company’s platforms reach just short of 3 billion unique individuals each month.

Zuck and team stopped reporting monthly active user figures for Facebook in their earnings announcements a few quarters ago, so it’s now more difficult to cite exact figures for individual platform use.

For perspective, the company’s most recent “official” figure for Facebook use (in January 2024) was 3.065 billion monthly active users, but – as we’ve noted before – the company’s official MAU figures have invariably been considerably higher than its own figures for Facebook ad reach.

Meanwhile, third-party figures for active Facebook use also tend to be lower than the company’s “official” MAU figures, although it’s important to stress that this dynamic is common across all social platforms, not just those owned by Meta.

So how many people are actually using Meta’s platforms each month?

Well, Kepios’s analysis of data from the company’s own ad planning tools, together with our analysis of third-party data from GWI, data.ai, Similarweb, and Semrush, indicates that:

However, it’s interesting to note that ad reach as a percentage of overall user figures still varies meaningfully across each of these platforms.

First up, remember that WhatsApp is still ad free (at least for now), while ad placements are yet to launch on Threads.

Across the other three platforms, Meta’s own tools state that ads reach the following audiences each month:

For perspective, that means nearly all Facebook users see ads on the platform, but roughly 15 percent of Instagram users may not be served any Instagram ads in a typical month, while roughly 1 in 4 active Messenger users fall outside of that platform’s “ad audience”.

However, Meta’s own tools indicate that Facebook ad reach has declined by 3.7 percent over the past year, from 2.31 billion in October 2023, to today’s 2.22 billion.

In absolute terms, Facebook’s ad reach has dropped by 85 million since this time last year, although it’s worth noting that this change may reflect a “correction” resulting from the removal of duplicate and false accounts, and may not indicate any equivalent change in real, human users.

On the other hand, Instagram reach has increased by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months, from 1.64 billion in October 2023, to today’s 1.69 billion.

That means Instagram has added more than 50 million users to its ad audience over the past year, with Brazil and India responsible for the majority of that growth.

Messenger’s ad reach has been on a downward trajectory over recent months though, and the latest reported figure of 937 million is actually below the figure that the company reported this time two years ago.

Figures reported in Meta’s own tools show that Messenger reach has fallen by almost 100 million since October 2023, equating to a drop of 9.5 percent, while the most recent figure is 39 million lower than the total for October 2022.

Making sense of Meta’s trends

But it’s critical that we put these figures in perspective.

First up, changes to the company’s own reporting policies – especially in relation to the reporting of ad reach for audiences below the age of 18 – has likely played a role in damping reported figures, and total ad reach across all ages may actually be higher than the reported figures suggest.

It’s also important to remember that – on average – 3.27 billion people use one of Meta’s platforms every single day.

That’s a remarkable achievement, made all the more remarkable when we consider that the company’s platforms remain blocked in China.

Indeed, if we focus solely on populations aged 13 and above outside of China, data suggests that a whopping 63 percent of all those people who can use Meta’s platforms already do so every single day.

That’s nearly two-thirds of the total eligible population, without even factoring for internet adoption.

Quality and quantity

And furthermore, Meta’s strength doesn’t just lie in active user numbers.

Research from GWI shows that 64.1 percent of adult internet users outside of China choose a Meta-owned property as their “favourite” social platform, although it’s important to highlight that YouTube is not available as an answer option for this question in GWI’s survey [GWI treats YouTube as a video platform rather than as a social media platform].

Social media users aged 35 to 44 are the most likely to choose a Meta platform as their favourite, with more than 2 in 3 (66.9 percent) people in that cohort outside of China preferring one of the company’s properties.

However, more than 6 in 10 people (61.3 percent) aged 16 to 24 outside of China also choose a Meta property as their favourite, so the company still has plenty of heft amongst younger generations too.

In other words, people don’t just use Meta’s platforms – they actively embrace them.

Overall, Instagram is the world’s “most preferred” social medium today, with 1 in 6 social media users (16.7 percent) at a worldwide level identifying the platform as their favourite [note that this figure includes social media users in China].

WhatsApp takes second place in the latest global ranking, with just under 16 percent of the total vote.

And Facebook takes third spot, with 13.2 percent of the world’s adult internet users identifying it as their favourite.

WeChat is the first non-Meta platform to appear, with 1 in 8 global users identifying Tencent’s super app as their top choice.

And TikTok rounds out the top five, with 7.9 percent of global internet users over the age of 16 identifying the short video platform as their favourite.

TikTok has been building momentum over recent months though, so it’s worth taking a closer look at whether the short video phenomenon might challenge Meta’s dominance.

Instagram vs TikTok

First up, a juicy headline: the global TikTok ad reach figure reported in Bytedance’s planning tools is now higher than the global Instagram ad reach figure reported in Meta’s planning tools.

More specifically:

However, third-party data tells quite a different story to these company-reported figures, and all the evidence suggests that Instagram is still well ahead of TikTok when it comes to active user numbers.

For example, data.ai’s figures for mobile app activity indicate that Instagram still has at least 50 percent more users than TikTok does.

GWI’s survey data tells a similar story to data.ai’s app intelligence too, with figures for Instagram use just over 50 percent higher than figures for TikTok use [note that we treat GWI’s figures for TikTok use in China as “Douyin”, just as ByteDance does in its own corporate reporting].

Given both platforms’ reliance on mobile app experiences, web traffic figures are somewhat less representative, but it’s still interesting to note that Semrush’s figures put Instagram roughly 50 percent ahead of TikTok, while Similarweb’s figures put the gap at closer to 30 percent in Instagram’s favour.

So, based on these various third-party figures, it’s safe to conclude that Instagram is still comfortably ahead of TikTok when it comes to overall user numbers.

However, these same datasets do suggest that TikTok’s user base is growing faster than Instagram’s is, so we’ll continue to monitor this situation in future reports.

The broadest appeal?

But looking beyond absolute user numbers, we spotted another intriguing data point in this quarter’s research.

Even though it’s not the world’s largest social platform, the latest audience overlaps data from GWI suggests that Instagram is social media users’ most common “second” platform, with the platform seeing the highest proportion of overlaps compared with any other platform.

For example, almost 89 percent of Snapchat users also use Instagram, while more than 4 in 5 TikTok users also use Instagram.

Meanwhile, Instagram is the most common overlap amongst active users of YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and various other platforms – including LinkedIn, where Instagram ties with Facebook for the most frequent match.

There may be various reasons for this pattern, but one potential “read” of the data is that Instagram has the broadest appeal of any social media platform, catering to different kinds of users, with different interests and motivations.

TikTok vs Instagram: from reach to frequency and consumption

User numbers aren’t the only metric that marketers should consider when building a social media plan though, and TikTok delivers a compelling case when it comes to some other important measures.

For example, TikTok is the clear winner in data.ai’s latest figures for monthly time per active user, with the typical user of the platform’s Android app spending an average of 34 hours and 15 minutes per month scrolling through videos.

That’s the equivalent of well over an hour every day, but remember that this is the average, and many people will spend considerably longer than this using the platform each month.

Meanwhile, the same dataset puts average Instagram use at just 16 hours and 49 minutes per month – less than half of the figure we just saw for TikTok.

data.ai’s intelligence does reveal that Instagram sees a slightly higher figure for average “sessions” per month, but each of those sessions lasts an average of 2 minutes and 53 seconds, which is less than half of the average of 5 minutes and 58 seconds for each TikTok session.

So, while Instagram appears to have a meaningfully higher number of active users, the world still spends more cumulative time using TikTok each month, and data.ai’s figures indicate that TikTok’s total is more than 20 percent higher than total Instagram time.

Show me the money

Neither company publishes detailed insights into ad revenue for these specific platforms.

However, eMarketer estimates that Instagram will capture roughly USD $31 billion of ad spend in the US alone in 2024, which is almost three times higher than the USD $10.4 billion that it forecasts for TikTok’s US ad revenues this year.

For added perspective, users in the USA account for roughly 9.8 percent of Instagram’s global ad audience, whereas that figure is quite a bit lower – 8.2 percent – for TikTok.

However, TikTok also earns revenue through TikTok Shop, with ByteDance stating a target of USD $17.5 billion for the platform’s social commerce sales in 2024.

And the company also earns a sizeable chunk of revenue from TikTok coins, which the platform’s end users can send to content creators in much the same way that they might throw coins into the guitar case of a physical world busker.

Indeed, TikTok was the top grossing app across the Google Play and iOS app stores between June and August 2024, even when compared with the world’s top mobile games.

More specifically, the latest intelligence from data.ai shows that global users spent a total of roughly USD $3.7 billion on TikTok Coins in the 12 months to August 2024 (not including Douyin), and even if 30 percent of this total will go to app store owners, that means TikTok still earned USD $2.6 billion in revenue from end consumers over the past year.

So, while Instagram probably still leads in terms of overall revenue (at least outside of China), it’s also clear that TikTok is a formidable cash cow for ByteDance.

Marketing considerations

But from a marketing perspective, one other stat really stands out.

The latest research from GWI shows that Instagram users are considerably more likely to say they use the platform to research potential purchases than TikTok users are to say the same of the short video platform.

More specifically, 62.3 percent of Instagram users aged 16 and above say that they use the platform to follow or research brands and products, compared with less than half (49.7 percent) of TikTok users who use that platform for the same purposes.

And remember that Instagram’s active user base is roughly 1.5 times the size that of TikTok’s user base too, which further amplifies the significance of this gap.

Furthermore, it’s worth highlighting that Facebook users are also more likely to turn to that platform to research potential purchases than TikTok users are.

That’s not to say that TikTok isn’t a great opportunity of course; indeed, everything we’ve seen so far proves that it’s one of the most compelling channels in the modern marketing landscape.

However, all of the data presented here shows that media headlines aren’t always the most representative indication of a platform’s potential, and more established platforms are still just as worthy of marketers’ attention as the shiny new kids on the block.

And the conclusion here is one that we see again and again in these Global Digital Reports: every marketer needs to do their own due diligence, and invest time to understand the specific preferences and behaviours of their chosen audiences in each of their chosen markets.

And on that note, it’s worth pointing out that TikTok’s audience profile has aged meaningfully over the past year.

Indeed, men aged 25 to 34 now account for more than 1 in 5 users in the platform’s ad audience, and ByteDance’s own data indicates that the 25 to 34 year-old segment now accounts for the largest share of the platform’s ad audience overall.

More specifically, users aged 25 to 34 now account for more than 36 percent of TikTok’s total ad reach, compared with 33 percent for users aged 18 to 24.

For perspective, 69.4 percent of TikTok’s reported ad audience is below the age of 35, compared with the 62.4 percent of Instagram’s audience that falls into this age group.

A false dichotomy

Having said all that, there’s one more data point in this quarter’s report that “overrides” many of these comparisons.

New numbers from GWI show that the typical social media user now makes active use of 6.8 different platforms every month, with that figure increasing over recent months.

And given that more than half of Instagram users also use TikTok, while more than 80 percent of TikTok users use Instagram, the simplest tip I can offer is this: if your budget allows it, you can use both platforms.

However, given the extent of those audience overlaps, this may not be the most efficient long-term strategy, so I’d recommend adopting a “test-and-learn” approach to discover which platform delivers the most cost effective results for your needs.

Be sure to focus on value-generating outcomes for your measurement though, because metrics such as reach, frequency, and even engagement aren’t particularly illuminating when it comes to determining the business performance of your social campaigns.

YouTube tops the rankings

But despite continued media and industry excitement surrounding “newer” platforms, our analysis of all the available data suggests that YouTube is still the largest “social media” opportunity.

Granted, not everybody considers YouTube to be a “social” platform, but we could easily say the same of TikTok, and either way, I’m not convinced that such semantic arguments help us to make better choices.

So, let’s focus on the data, and explore what the numbers tell us.

First up, figures reported in each company’s own ad planning tools put YouTube firmly at the top of the leaderboard, with monthly ad reach of 2.53 billion.

That global total has crept up over recent months too, with Google’s ad planning resources pointing to quarter-on-quarter growth of just over 1 percent.

For comparison, YouTube’s reported ad reach figure is roughly 14 percent higher than that of Facebook, its next nearest rival.

However, Google’s tools currently only report ad reach data for 87 countries, compared with the 236 territories for which we’re able to collect ad reach data for Facebook, so it’s likely that YouTube’s “true” ad reach is even higher than the published figures suggest.

And in another interesting development, YouTube’s reported adult audience figure has now surpassed that of Facebook.

Google’s latest data shows that YouTube ads now reach 2.26 billion adults aged 18+ each month, compared with 2.22 billion adults aged 18+ for Facebook.

But other datasets tell an even more compelling story.

The latest intelligence from data.ai indicates that YouTube users spend almost twice as long using the platform’s Android app each month as Facebook users spend using Facebook’s Android app.

As we saw earlier, it’s worth noting that TikTok tops the rankings when it comes to average time per user, but the sheer number of YouTube users means that YouTube’s cumulative monthly watch time is more than double the figure we see for TikTok.

Moreover, these figures only factor activity on the platform’s apps.

For added perspective, data from Similarweb shows that internet users spend close to 10 billion additional hours per month watching YouTube videos in web browsers, which is considerably more than the 146 million additional hours that people spend watching TikTok videos in web browsers.

Figures from Semrush put YouTube even further ahead, but the takeaway is still the same: in addition to being the world’s most used mobile app, YouTube is also the second most popular destination on the web, and only Google.com ranks higher.

And for some fun trivia, Semrush’s data also shows that YouTube is the most common destination after a Google search, with a hefty 4.6 percent of all visits to Google.com resulting in a subsequent visit to YouTube.com.

Based on Semrush’s latest data, these figures suggest that Google refers roughly 6 billion visits to its sister platform every month.

What’s happening at X?

It’s been a while since we took a look at the platform formerly known as Twitter, but considering the platform will doubtless become more of a feature in media headlines over the coming weeks thanks to the impending US election, it’s worth taking a closer look at X.

First up, we detected yet more anomalies in X’s reported ad reach data this quarter, with the company’s own ad tools reporting eerily similar growth in reach for almost every single country in the world.

More specifically, the difference in the country reach figures reported by X’s own tools between July 2024 and October was consistently between 0.7 percent and 0.8 percent, with 98 of 231 total territories seeing growth of 0.7457 percent.

X’s press team didn’t respond to our request for clarification by our publication deadline, so it’s unclear whether this anomaly relates to a system glitch, or whether it’s the result of a change in X’s reporting methodology.

However, it seems highly implausible that we’d see such consistency in growth across all of these countries, so we’d advise significant caution when interpreting the latest growth figures in X’s ad reach data.

Having said that, the current audience total of 590 million reported by X’s tools aligns closely with user figures published by third-party tools.

For example, data.ai’s latest intelligence suggests that X’s mobile app attracted more than 600 million active users in August 2024.

Meanwhile, GWI’s latest survey data suggests that the platform’s overall user figure may be considerably higher still, with the addition of web-based users taking the overall total towards 800 million.

To add perspective to these figures, Similarweb’s data indicates that X.com attracted an average of 488 million unique monthly visitors between June and August 2024, while Semrush reports that X.com saw more than 900 million unique monthly visitors in August 2024.

There will likely be a meaningful degree of overlap between X use in mobile apps and in web browsers, but nonetheless, these third-party figures suggest that X’s own ad reach figure of 590 million may indeed be highly representative of actual platform use.

Logged-in users vs platform influence

However, let’s return to those web traffic figures, because they tell an important story about X (Twitter) use that’s often overlooked in media reports.

For starters, while Similarweb reports a somewhat lower figure for unique monthly visits (488 million), the company’s analysis still ranks X.com fifth in the world in terms of total website traffic, putting it ahead of Wikipedia.

The same data also suggests that the typical “visitor” returns almost 10 times per month too, which indicates a relatively high frequency of use.

However, there’s insufficient nuance in this data to tell us how many of these visitors actually signed in to X, as opposed to visiting the site as an anonymous content consumer.

These figures likely also underrepresent the overall impact that X has when we consider that news outlets still frequently embed tweets within their own content [sorry Elon, but “X posts” just doesn’t sound as good as “tweets”].

But even if we focus on visits to the platform’s own web domain, Similarweb’s latest data suggests that X.com still accounts for a sizeable 1 percent of all traffic to the world’s top 10,000 web domains.

For comparison, Google.com accounts for 18.6 percent of that total, Youtube for 6.6 percent, and Facebook for 2.9 percent.

Instagram ranks fourth with 1.3 percent, with X’s 1 percent putting it in fifth place.

But while we’re exploring this data, it’s worth highlighting that Yahoo! still features prominently in these top domains, with traffic to the site’s “.com” and “.co.jp” domains combining to capture roughly 1.6 percent of the total across the world’s top 10,000 websites, which means that Yahoo! could technically be considered the world’s fourth most visited web brand.

In other words, there are still plenty of amazing opportunities out there, if you’re willing to look beyond hyperbolic media headlines.

Social media rapid roundup

Next up, here are some of this quarter’s other big social media headlines…

Telegram pushing towards 1 billion users

Despite a litany of legal challenges affecting the company over recent weeks, Telegram adoption continues to climb, with the platform’s latest “official” statement putting monthly active users at 950 million.

Third-party data corroborates this trajectory too, with figures from both GWI and data.ai putting the user total in the same ballpark.

Snapchat MAU up to 850 million

In its Q2 2024 investor earnings announcement, Snapchat revealed that it now has 850 million monthly active users, with more than half of those users (432 million) logging in every day.

However, the company’s ad planning resources suggest that Snapchat ad reach has fallen over recent months, with the latest total of 706 million roughly 0.7 percent lower than the figure the company’s tools reported in July.

LinkedIn still growing

The latest figures published in LinkedIn’s ad planning tools suggests that the platform’s ads now reach more than 1 in 5 of the world’s adults.

It’s important to stress that LinkedIn’s ad reach is based on total registered members rather than monthly active users, but nonetheless, the data makes for interesting reading.

The company’s own ad reach figures point to a global audience of 1.15 billion, with that figure increasing by more than 16 percent since this time last year.

However, third-party data suggests that active use of the LinkedIn platform is likely less than half of that ad reach figure, and Kepios’s analysis of various data points to a more likely figure of between 350 and 400 million monthly active users.

Reddit roars on

Reddit continues to post healthy growth after its IPO earlier this year, with the company’s ad planning tools reporting a 5.9 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in global ad reach.

The available data suggests that Reddit ads now reach 264 million users each month, although the platform’s ad planning tools don’t seem to report data for various countries across Eastern Europe.

Moreover, similar to the situation we saw earlier for X, third-party data indicates that non-logged-in visitors may account for a significant share of Reddit activity, suggesting that Reddit may have far more “influence” than these ad reach figures suggest.

For example, Similarweb’s latest data shows that Reddit.com accounts for 0.8 percent of global traffic to the world’s top 10,000 web domains, placing Reddit ninth in Similarweb’s overall website ranking.

The company’s absolute figures also make for interesting reading, with Similarweb reporting 632 million unique monthly visitors to Reddit.com

Semrush reports an even bigger figure though, with the company’s latest analysis pointing to a hefty 966 million unique monthly visitors.

Meanwhile, a combined total of 5.84 billion monthly visits is enough to place Reddit sixth in Semrush’s latest website ranking, suggesting that the platform is still more popular than the world’s top “adult” site.

The outlook for 2025

Those first 9,000 words of analysis should help you get a grasp on the global “state of digital” in October 2024, but what about the future?

Let’s conclude our final Global Digital Report of 2024 by turning our attention to the developments in connected behaviour that I think will have the greatest impact on digital in 2025 and beyond.

Note that this isn’t an outlook on tech developments though, so you won’t find any breathless hyperbole about quantum [or even post-quantum!] computing, extended reality, edge devices, “hyper automation”, or – ahem – the metaverse.

1. Search and research 

This shouldn’t come as a shock, but my top tip for 2025 is that various factors will combine to reshape the search landscape over the coming months.

Firstly, with Statista projecting that the global search advertising market will be worth USD $306 billion in 2024 alone, it’s almost inevitable that an increasing number of AI solutions will offer alternatives to today’s search engines.

There’s every chance that evolved AI offerings from Google and Microsoft will come to dominate AI search of course, just as their “conventional” search offerings do today.

However, it seems increasingly likely that we’ll see AI search platforms offer compelling alternatives to the current, link-based SERPs paradigm, and it may be particularly difficult for Google and Bing to build momentum in that space without cannibalising their hugely valuable conventional search offerings.

However, we’ve already seen both Google and Bing feature an increasing number of snippets and summaries in their respective results, resulting in a meaningful number of searches delivering “zero-click” outcomes, where the searcher does not need to go beyond the search results page in order to find the information they need.

Meanwhile, social search may continue the upward trajectory that we explored earlier in this analysis.

Indeed, social search has been on the rise for some time now, especially amongst younger generations and in less developed economies.

Moreover, with platforms like TikTok now promoting on-platform search ads, we might expect to see these behaviours gain even more momentum in 2025 and beyond.

Don’t be misled by headlines and clickbait though; conventional search is just as popular as it’s even been, even amongst younger audiences.

Overall, 82.4 percent of internet users aged 16 and above used a search engine in the past month, and that figure is actually even higher – 82.8 percent – amongst users aged 16 to 24.

Critically though, data from GWI shows that people across generations discover and research brands, products and services through a wide variety of channels.

And that’s the key takeaway here: people will continue to adopt a range of different behaviours in order to find what they want, even if the mix of devices and services they use to satisfy those needs may evolve over time.

Recommendation: take a multifaceted approach to search in the months ahead, to ensure you’re always in the right place at the right time.

2. Diverging displays

Digital experiences continue to “migrate” to new kinds of devices, and some of these new behaviours will be worthy of renewed attention from marketers in 2025.

Firstly, connected televisions (CTVs) are playing an increasingly important role within the “digital mix”, and these big screens offer marketers some excellent opportunities to reach audiences with high-impact video content.

For perspective, GWI reports that nearly 1 in 3 connected adults (31.6 percent) say that they already access digital content via a television.

Meanwhile, Google’s advertising resources indicate that advertisers can now reach more than 40 percent of Americans via YouTube ads on connected televisions, while the equivalent figure in the UK and Australia is roughly1 in 3,  and the figure for Brazil is just over 28 percent.

However, it’s worth stressing that experts have voiced concerns relating to ad fraud with CTV apps, so marketers should conduct careful due diligence when planning and deploying CTV campaigns.

But it’s not just big screens that are capturing a greater share of our digital activities.

GWI’s data also shows that more and more of us are using smartwatches, with more than 1 in 4 connected adults saying that they now own one of these devices.

Admittedly, most users won’t be watching feature films on their smartwatch, but the fact that these devices are often a first conduit for digital notifications means that marketers may want to explore the potential that these devices offer within a broader digital mix.

And lastly, despite rather lacklustre sales of Apple’s Vision Pro headset since its launch earlier this year, there’s still a chance that “spatial computing” will start to gain momentum over the coming months.

Current trends don’t point to mainstream adoption any time soon though, so my counsel to marketers here is to adopt a patient, “wait-and-see” approach when it comes to spatial computing.

Top tip: explore opportunities to deliver immersive video experiences via connected TVs.

3. Entertainment and escapism

And while we’re on the subject of immersive video experiences, our analysis suggests that audiences are increasingly turning to digital platforms for entertainment.

GWI reports that watching videos, TV shows, and movies is a primary reason for using the internet amongst more than half of the world’s connected adults, with this motivation now on par with accessing news content.

Watching videos and shows is particularly prevalent amongst younger audiences, with close to 6 in 10 (58.9 percent) saying that this is a primary reason why they go online.

It’s interesting to note that music videos remain the top choice for online video content, although nearly 4 in 10 connected adults (38.6 percent) say that they listen to music streaming services too.

Meanwhile, video games remain hugely popular with the world’s internet users, with GWI reporting that a whopping 84.1 percent of connected adults play games.

None of these are “new” behaviours per se, but our analysis of trends over recent months suggests that an increasing number of people have been turning to the internet to find and consume entertainment content.

These increases may in part have been driven by a wider range of options, but there’s also a chance that people are looking for a dose of escapism, potentially due to the psychological impact of recent news cycles.

Indeed, as we saw in our Digital 2024 Global News Report, an increasing number of people are actively “avoiding” news, and the latest edition of the Reuters Digital News Report indicates that roughly 4 in 10 people are now “worn out” by “relentless”, “depressing” news cycles.

And while some audiences may welcome a reprieve from 2024’s unprecedented global election coverage, the ongoing spectre of war in the Middle East and Ukraine, coupled with rising geopolitical tensions, mean that the impact of “news overload” is just as likely to continue in 2025.

That’s not to say that people will stop looking for and consuming factual content online, and I fully expect to see “finding information” continue to top the global ranking of digital motivations for some time to come.

However, I also expect we’ll see an increasing trend towards “online escapism”, and this may have particularly important implications for marketers.

Recommendation: invest time to understand the contexts in which your marketing content and experiences will come to life, and look for opportunities to deliver “emotional value” in the form of escapism, reassurance, or even just an alternative to the “superlativisation” that seems to dominate today’s feeds.

4. Connecting with community

Sticking with people’s motivations for going online, one of the other trends we’ve been watching this year has been an increase in the importance that people place on connecting with friends and loved ones.

On a relative basis compared with this time three years ago, GWI’s data shows that people are now 10 percent more likely to say that “staying in touch with friends and family” is a primary reason for going online, and more than 6 in 10 people (60.1 percent) cited this as a top motivation in the company’s latest wave of research.

That’s still behind the 62.6 percent of people who cite the top-ranked motivation of “finding information”, but the gap between these two motivations has more than halved over the past three years.

Keeping in touch with friends and family is also the primary reason why people use social media today.

Meanwhile, chat and messaging platforms remain the most widely used kind of connected service, with close to 95 percent of connected adults saying that they use at least one such app or website every month.

And over recent months, we’ve also seen some impressive gains from individual social platforms that help people to connect with one another, with Telegram and Snapchat both seeing strong user growth over the course of 2024.

Suggestion: explore opportunities to use marketing to help your audiences connect with the people they care about. As Cory Doctorow observed, “Content isn’t king… Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”

Wrapping up

That’s all for this year’s Digital 2024 reports, but I’ll be back on your screens again in just a few short weeks, with the first of our Digital 2025 reports already scheduled for early February.

In the meantime, don’t forget that you can dig into more than a decade’s worth of data covering the gamut of online behaviours in more than 230 countries and territories around the world in our DataReportal library.

And if you’d like to connect with me, please feel free to drop me a note on LinkedIn.

With that though, I wish you a successful Q4, a relaxing year-end break, and all the best for 2025.