OTTAWA: Google and Facebook continue to be the juggernauts that dominate how Canadians use the Internet but a new “non-duopoly” trend may be emerging, suggests a report by the measurement firm comScore.
When looking at how Canadians used the internet throughout 2017, growth in time spent with the Top 100 most popular online properties excluding Facebook and Google sites was consistently strong. “What we’re starting to see in Canada is folks outside out those two are showing some increases there’s a growth outside of the duopoly,” said Bryan Segal, comScore’s vice-president of sales, in advance of Thursday’s release of the Global Digital Future in Focus report.
“Time on the internet is not decreasing, it’s just you see there’s other channels (growing) and time is being proportioned (there). There’s definitely a shift.”
Earlier this year, Facebook reported that it saw its numbers of daily active users in the U.S. and Canada decline for the first time ever. Meanwhile, the growing social media platform Snapchat was highlighted in the comScore report for its growth. Segal said he wasn’t surprised by Snapchat’s growth and “significant slice” of the market, given the app’s younger base of users.
The comScore report looks at digital trends in 13 markets, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S., and found that while there’s a global shift toward “mobile-only” consumers who have given up completely on using computers, Canadians were still keen users of laptops and desktops.
