digital pulse quarter 2 summer 2010
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TRANSCRIPT
1
The Privacy Issue
How willing are Australians to share personal information online?
Digital Pulse Study Summer 2010
Pulse Check Summer 2010 3Pulse Check Summer 2010
Our cover story
How comfortable are Australlians to 4-9share personal information online?
Regular features
Q2 How deeply has the internet 10-17become a part of our everyday lives?
Q3 What are Australians choosing 18-19to do online?
Q4 How are people harnessing the 22internet in different ways ?
Q5 How are Australians interacting 32with brands online?
Q6 What are Australians buying online? 34
Every quarter we ask a nationally representative sample of 300 Australians what they’re up to online. Here’s the issues explored in November…
Pulse Check Summer 2010 5
To share or not to share? It’s a generational thing
Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks with breathtaking candour on the topic of online privacy. He recently said, in a totally matter-of-fact way: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We more or less know what you’re thinking about”. In an even more Orwellian moment he quipped “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”. In light of Google’s recent scrapes with the Australian Privacy Commissioner, we all have reason to reflect carefully upon Schmidt’s warnings.
So just how seriously are Australians taking the issue of online privacy and how carefully are we rationing the information that we share with others online? This quarter our Digital Pulse study explores the extent to which we feel comfortable sharing different kinds of information over the internet, from our personal interests and opinions, to photographs, name and address details, telephone and credit card numbers.
We’ve discovered that people are quite open to sharing certain kinds of personal information and highly resistant to sharing others.
Six in ten Australians polled feel comfortable sharing their personal interests and attributed opinions with others online. It will surprise no one to learn that eight in ten young web users, less than 25 years of age, feel comfortable to share such personal opinions freely. While youth lead the way, a clear majority of Australians, regardless of age or gender, now embrace the idea that sharing their ideas and experiences online helps companies to deliver better products and services, more in tune with their needs.
But when it comes to sharing seriously personal data, Australians are considerably
more circumspect. Just 48% feel comfortable sharing their name and address details, 38% their credit card or telephone numbers and just 13% their passport or drivers licence numbers online. Australians are astutely distinguishing between low risk ‘public me’ data and high risk ‘private me’ data shared online. And this distinction is most clearly recognised by the young.
The stereotype of the young online user is of someone recklessly sharing personal information, oblivious to the risks. Yet the reality is their online behaviour is highly evolved. On the one hand they do relentlessly share
Pulse Check Summer 2010 7
To share or not share? The privacy issue…Our findings
their personal opinions, lifestyle activities and photos with peers online, yet on the other hand they are consistently wary about sharing data that allows their identification out in the real world. The very real risks of identity theft, cyber bullying and stalking are clearly well understood by online youth, given their cautious sharing of unique personal identifiers and their surprisingly active use of privacy settings on social sites.
The online journal First Monday recently published research amongst first-year university students in the US, noting just how engaged they have become with their privacy settings on Facebook.
Between 2009 and 2010 the percentage of students who changed their privacy settings four or more times doubled from 24% to 51%. And just 2% of students had never reviewed their privacy settings at all.
It’s the sharing of photos online that most divides the generations. While nearly two thirds of young web users feel comfortable to post photos online, just one third of 55 pluses are at all comfortable with the idea. The middle generation, 26-55 are at present perfectly divided on the topic, so represent an enticing new growth target for the likes of Flickr and Facebook.
For boomers, photos remain in the province of ‘private me’. Yet for young Australians, online photos epitomise the whole idea of living online, despite the reputational risks. As Schmidt, the king of the internet cache reminds social networkers “when you post something, the computers remember forever”. Just as young people have learned to become selective about their sharing of unique data identifiers, they may grow to recognise there’s a high price to pay for liberally posting personal photos and videos. That these too represent a unique personal identifier online.
An interesting counter-trend in the study is the relatively high levels of comfort that Australians 40-plus have with sharing personal identifiers like name and address details, phone numbers and credit card details online. This may in part be driven by the lesser risks of cyberstalking to this generation, but also flags their belief that the internet is primarily a transactional tool. It’s amongst older Australians that the e-commerce opportunity is most pronounced. It’s time for brands to take the silver surfers a good deal more seriously.
Pulse Check Summer 2010 9Pulse Check Summer 2010
Four ways to build trust with your online customers that will encourage them to share data with you:
1 Learn to listen
2 Say less, engage more
3 Give and keep on giving
4 Convince, respect and protect
Pulse Check Summer 2010 11
Everyday, people are talking about brands online. Everything from latest offers, the service they received, to things they wish for most.
Be it positive or negative, the value of tapping into the stream of conversation across online platforms can provide clear insights for your business.
These platforms range from dedicated online forums and groups to popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
TRY THISUse some of these free methods in scanning the social sphere to see what people are saying about your brand
Visit http://www.socialmention.com
Do a Twitter search: http://search.twitter.com/
Search Google or Yahoo! Groups: http://groups.google.com; http://groups.yahoo.com
Orange, the European phone company, knew people were talking about their services online, and that it needed to listen. Orange identified and listened to the key forums in which its products are discussed and the ‘super-contributors’ who talk most about the company – and then, put what it heard to use, below are two examples of this:
1. Orange has been able to identify and solve numerous “collective problems”. Recently, for example, 40,000 clients who signed up for a specific package complained of not receiving the amount of memory they had signed up for; the problem was quickly fixed.
2. Orange have been able to spot offers from their competitors that their customers want in their own plans. Family calling, for example, is now part of the Orange Open calling plan.
1 Learn to listen
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New products provide an excellent opportunity to engage both a brand’s existing fans and prospective buyers online.
Smart companies are using the web to engage consumers in new brand concepts, to harness their insights and build pre-launch buzz.
A social platform can become neverending well of customer insights that can be tapped into again and again. Here brands can connect their audience together in a community, answer questions and concerns and get them to learn more about the brand and new products.
SO ASK YOURSELFHow do you feature new products online to drive reappraisal of our brand?
Is there an opportunity to seed new ideas online to gauge consumer response and tap into the creativity of the crowd to make the ideas even better?
Audi posted images of its new A1 model across the social web, then aggregated mentions from across social platforms and reposted them on a microsite. The microsite didn’t just report what people were saying, it also allowed users to customize their own Audi A1 and then encouraged them to share it with friends. Almost 40,000 people created customised versions of the new model. In total 5.5 million people visited the microsite 119 million times, generating the largest number of car pre-orders in its history.
2 Say less, engage more
Pulse Check Summer 2010 15
When private information is sought of individuals, brands need to offer something in return of value.This may be in the form of a competition, useful content or exclusive invitations to underground events.
Today opt-in or Permission Marketing is the most effective weapon in a marketer’s arsenal. According to Seth Godin, “Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers,” he says. “It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education.”
Getting them in is the first step, keeping them is the challenge. If what you offer is once-off or flakey then they will simply opt-out.
DON’T BE A SORE LOSERIf you lose them, make it easy to opt-out. Don’t ruin any chances you have by keeping them against their will.
H&R Block introduced a new service called Premium Tax targeted at higher-income customers. However, it was a service that needed to be explained before customers could grasp its value.
Their internet banner which said “H&R Block: We’ll pay your taxes sweepstakes” had more than 50,000 responses from people who paid taxes and knew what H&R Block was. In order to gain a chance to have their taxes paid by H&R, the consumers gave the company permission to tell them more about Premium Tax. In this case, permission marketing worked effectively in getting the attention of their target group and elicited enough interest to gain their permission to further promote the service.
3 Give and keep on giving
Pulse Check Summer 2010 17
Instilling trust in users to provide their particulars requires ease of input, professional design, clarity of privacy policies and, ideally, the endorsement of trusted third parties.
Keep their trust by ensuring the information collected is safe and secure, as misuse can damage the relationship beyond repair.
FIGHT TEMPTATION……of sharing client information with others, particularly affiliate partners without their permission. Nothing irks a client more then when they provide personal information and then get spammed. Make it clear and simple for clients to select affiliate offers, and always make the default unselected.
A well worded and designed privacy statement and form will instill trust and put customers minds at ease. Follow this link to find a template for a good privacy statement.
http://online.businesslink.gov.uk/Growth_and_Innovation_files/Sample3_privacy_policy.doc
4 Convince, respect and protect
credit card numbers
refuse to share
generallyuncomfortable
sharing
generallycomfortable
sharing
totallycomfortable
sharing
name and address
telephone numbers
drivers licence or passport numbers
personal photos
personal interests
attributed comments
Pulse Check Summer 2010 19Pulse Check Summer 2010
Comfort with sharing types of personal information…
Pulse Check Summer 2010 21Pulse Check Summer 2010
Comfort with sharing divides the generations…
All Australians 14-25 26-55 56+ Female Male
Personal interests +31 +71 +31 +5 +36 +25
Attributed, not anonymous, comments +15 +46 +20 -14 +11 +20
Personal photographs -3 +25 -1 -25 -7 +1
Name and address details -5 -29 -1 +5 +2 +12
Credit card details -24 -39 -16 -30 -22 -27
Telephone numbers -25 -54 -21 -14 -29 -20
Drivers licence & passport details -75 -68 -77 -75 -80 -69
Significantly more comfortable (95% confidence interval) Significantly less comfortable (95% confidence interval)
Scores represent the balance of opinion: Totally and generally comfortable minus generally uncomfortable and refuse to share.
Q How comfortable are you sharing the following types of information over the internet?
Pulse Check Summer 2010 23
• Wifi at work and in public places
• Apple iPhone & iPad usage
• Viewing branded films & ads online
• Using Facebook Like This and Facebook Places
• Online purchasing of travel services, computer equipment and supplies, music, electrical appliances, wine, beer and spirits.
• Plug-in connections at home, work and school
• Accessing the internet via Nokia devices
• The relevance of cinema amongst 14-25 year olds
• Requesting information from brands via online forms
• Writing blogs
• Reading tweets/following brands on Twitter
• Posting CV’s online & commenting negatively about work, experiences; possibly reflecting a tougher job market?
• Online purchasing of books
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse fallingPulse rising
Our regular quarterly findings
Pulse falling
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
iPad or other tablet
Mobile phone
Desktop at workor school
Laptop
Desktop at home
Percent
25Pulse Check Summer 2010
In what ways are Australians connecting with the internet?
How have you accessed the internet in the past month?
Q2
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Other
Blackberry
Samsung
Nokia
Apple iPad
Apple iPhone
Other eg. tethering
Wireless USB 'dongle' device
Wi-fi in a public place eg. library
Wi-fi at work
Wi-fi at home
Plug-in a public place eg. library
Plug-in at work and school
Plug-in at home
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse Check Summer 2010 27
Brands of mobile device used to access the internet in the past month
How have you connected to the internet in the past month?Percent of total connections
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
A desktop computer at work or school
A homebased desktop computer
A laptop
An iPad
A mobile phone
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
01020304050607080
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0102030405060
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0102030405060
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
Pulse Check Summer 2010 29
Connection differences by age
31Pulse Check Summer 2010
How deeplyhas the internet become a part of our daily lives?
Approximately how much time in the average week would you spend accessing the internet, including emailing, instant messaging and social networking?
Q3
0
5
10
15
20
50 hours +
46-50 hours
41-45 hours
36-40 hours
31-35 hours
25-30 hours
21-25 hours
16-20 hours
11-15 hours
6-10 Hours
Up to 5 hours
MaleFemale
Up to 15hours
16-30hours
31-45hours
45hours +
Perc
ent
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Time spent online in the past month
14-25 years % 26-55 years % 56 + years %
Internet 91 Internet 89 Television 83Television 63 Television 76 Internet 81Game consoles 27 Newspapers 41 Newspapers 60Radio 27 Radio 38 Radio 57Cinema 18 Cinema 25 Magazines 19Newspapers 13 Magazines 21 Cinema 8Magazines 11 Game consoles 12 Game consoles 2None of the above 2 None of the above 4 None of the above 2
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse Check Summer 2010 35
Which of the following media would you describe as being difficult for you to personally live without?
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+ years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
0
20
40
60
80
100
56+years
26-55years
14-25years
Pulse Check Summer 2010 37
Internet
Newspapers Magazines
Cinema Television
Radio
Game consoles like Xbox, Wii & Playstation
Which of the following media would you describe as being difficult for you to personally live without?
50-75%Internet banking 70%Browsing eBay 62%Networking with friends (Facebook, Myspace, etc) 57%
Reading email from brands 50%
20-49%YouTubing 47%Researching brands 43%SMS texting 39%Accessing work email accounts 38%Hunting for property 33%Tagging friends in photos 30%Clicked on Facebook Like this 29%Skyping 29%Watching catch-up TV 29%Viewing branded films or ads 27%Gaming 27%Planning trips & holidays 27%Visiting online forums 27%Participated in an online forum 26%Job seeking 26%Opting in to receive brand information 24%
Requesting info from brands 24%Entering brand competitions 23%Illegal downloading 22%Listening to podcasts 21%Selling on eBay 21%Clicking on ads 20%
LESS THAN 20%Reading brand blogs 16%Commenting positively about a brand 15%Commenting positively about work 14%Writing blogs 14%Friending brands 13%Using Facebook Places 12%Business networking (LinkedIn, Plaxo etc) 9%
Reading Twitter posts 9%Using GPS mobile apps 9%Using Cloud applications (Google etc) 8%Posting CVs 7%Using cameras on mobile devices 7%Commenting negatively about work 6%Commenting negatively about brands 6%Subscribing to and reading RSS feeds 5%Writing blog entries 5%Writing tweets 5%Dating 4%Participating in webinars 3%Following brands on Twitter 2%
MORE THAN 75% +Browsing the internet 91%Accessing personal email accounts 91%
Pulse Check Summer 2010 39
Q4 What are Australians choosing to do online?
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse fallingPulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse Check Summer 2010 41
Q5 How are Australians interacting with brands online?Total 14-25 years 26-55 years 56+ years Female Male
Accessed a bank or investment account online 70 50 75 74 72 69Received and read an email promoting a company or brand 50 34 51 60 50 50Researched a brand 42 38 44 42 42 44Clicked on the Facebook ‘Like this’ feature 29 46 28 19 33 25Watched a commercial or branded film on Youtube 27 41 30 14 22 33Planned or managed a business trip or holiday online 27 14 29 30 27 26Requested further information from a company online 24 14 25 26 23 24Opted to accept promotional offers or information from a company or brand 24 13 29 22 26 21Participated in a brand-sponsored contest or sweepstakes online 23 14 24 25 22 23Clicked on a digital ad/banner 20 25 22 13 16 23Read company or brand blog 16 18 17 13 16 16Commented positively to others about a brand 15 21 16 9 15 15Friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace 13 20 15 6 14 12Used Facebook Places 12 11 13 11 12 12Commented negatively to others about a brand 6 9 6 2 5 6Subscribed to or read an RSS feed from a company or brand 5 5 6 5 4 7Followed a brand on twitter 2 7 1 1 2 3
Significantly less likely to do (95% confidence interval) Significantly more likely to do (95% confidence interval)
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse Check Summer 2010 43Pulse Check Summer 2010
Total 14-25 years 26-55 years 56+ years Female Male Metro Regional
Travel Services 32 14 36 36 33 31 35 28Computer equipment and supplies 31 30 35 24 23 40 34 25Tickets to movies, concerts or shows 28 32 34 16 28 29 33 21Clothing and footwear 28 30 34 16 34 22 31 23Music 28 36 33 11 25 31 29 24Electrical applicances 25 25 31 14 19 32 29 18Insurance 24 18 25 26 18 30 27 18Games 22 36 25 7 18 26 22 21Applications 21 27 27 7 15 27 23 18Books 20 23 23 13 22 18 21 18Fast food 18 29 20 8 21 16 23 11Movies & TV shows 18 29 23 2 19 18 20 1Wine, beer or spirits 15 7 17 17 11 19 18 10Cosmetics 12 14 15 3 16 7 12 11Nutritional products 11 13 14 6 11 12 14 7Groceries 10 13 13 2 9 10 12 5Stationery 10 13 11 8 8 14 14 4Newspapers & Magazines 10 11 11 8 8 13 10 10
Significantly less likely to buy (95% confidence interval) Significantly more likely to buy (95% confidence interval)
Q6 What are Australians buying online?
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling Pulse rising
Pulse falling
Pulse rising
Pulse falling
No79%
Yes21%
No 17%
Yes 83%
No80%
No 11%
Yes20%
Yes 89%
Pulse Check Summer 2010 45
How do positive and negative online experiences with brands affect actual purchasing?
Can you recall an occasion when an online experience changed your opinion of a brand in a positive way?
Can you recall an occasion when an online experience changed your opinion of a brand in a negative way?
Did this positive experience influence whether you actually purchased a product or service from this brand?
Did this negative experience influence whether you actually purchased a product or service from this brand?
NB. Sample weighted to be representative of the Australian population.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Regional Metro
OtherWAQLDVICNSW& ACT
Num
ber
0
50
100
150
200
MaleFemale
Num
ber
0
50
100
150
200
56+ years25-65 years
14-25 years
Num
ber
Pulse Check Summer 2010 47
Age Region Gender
Appendix The Survey Sample
Digital Pulse: [email protected]
Principals digital offer: [email protected]
Any other enquiries: Tom Brigstocke 0418 447 094 | [email protected]
Office locations:
Sydney:Level One 58 Lower Fort Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Melbourne:1 Stewart Street Windsor VIC 3181 Australia
www.principals.com.au
For further information on: