Smartphone penetration in the UK has reached 67 percent and in the three month average ending March 2013, over 33.4 million Brits owned a smartphone.

The growth of smartphone ownership provides advertisers with more opportunities to reach their target audience on the move. A comparison of multiple mobile ad formats shows that UK smartphone users aged 18-24 have an especially high recall of mobile advertising (38.1 percent), as opposed to the general smartphone population (26.5 percent). In regards to mobile social networking, 26.7 percent of 18-24 year old smartphone users actually clicked on an advert in March 2013, compared to only 16.5 percent of the total smartphone owners in the UK.

The number of smartphone users in the EU5 countries (Spain, Germany, Italy, France and the UK) grew by 30 percent over the year, reaching 136.2 million in the three month average ending December 2012. This was the first month that all European countries crossed the 50 percent smartphone penetration mark.

Spain leads the rankings with 66 percent of mobile users owning a smartphone in December 2012, followed by the UK with 64 percent – both countries were above the European average of 57 percent. In France and Italy, smartphone ownership was at 53 percent amongst the mobile population, with Germany concluding the rankings at 51 percent during the three month average ending in December 2012.

For more country specific insights into the mobile and online landscape, you can download our free series of 2013 Future in Focus reports for Germany, France and the UK. These reports include the latest trends in digital behaviour, social media, search, ecommerce, online advertising and mobile.

To celebrate International Women’s Day we looked at how much time women spent on the internet in January 2013 and how this differed in various countries across the globe. American women come up top in the rankings with an average of 42 hours spent per visitor online during the month. Canadian and British women are not far behind with an average of 41.9 and 41.7 hours spent respectively accessing the internet via a computer.

It is interesting to note that half of the countries in this ranking are European – women in the UK, Netherlands, Poland, France and Turkey all spend over the equivalent of a day online per month.

A comparison of online engagement across Europe shows that internet users in the UK spent the most amount of time online in December 2012. During the month, UK consumers spent more than 37 hours online on their PC, representing the highest of all 18 European markets analysed. Turkey and Netherlands are second and third in the rankings with internet users spending an average of 31 and 30.6 hours online respectively in December 2012.

Even though online engagement in the UK increased by 5 percent over the year, Belgium is the country that achieved the strongest growth of time spent per visitor across Europe. Internet users in Belgium actually spent an additional 2 hours online in December 2012 compared to a year ago.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the UK digital landscape then join us for a complimentary webinar on the 5^th of March 2013 or download a copy of our 2013 UK Digital Future in Focus report.

In today’s multi-platform environment many people consume content on the go using different devices throughout the day. Looking at the share of device page traffic on a typical work day in the UK, we can see that mobiles capture the largest share of page traffic in the early mornings, especially between 7am-9am as Brits consume digital content over breakfast or during their commute to work.

The highest share of computer usage occurs during core working hours (10am-5pm), taking a dip in traffic share in the evenings after 8pm. This makes room for tablets which are used heavily during evenings, with share of device page traffic peaking at 8pm-9pm on a typical workday in the UK.

For more insights into the UK market download a copy of our 2013 UK Digital Future in Focus report or register for our complimentary webinar on the 5^th of March 2013.

In the UK, YouTube.com had over 32 million unique video viewers in November 2012. The YouTube channel that attracted most unique viewers during the month was VEVO with an audience of nearly 11.8 million. This was followed by Warner Music in second place with 6.1 million unique viewers in the UK and Machinima in third position with 5.4 million in November 2012. The YouTube channels in fourth and fifth position are FullScreen and Maker Studios Inc.

For UK smartphone owners, their phone has become an important shopping medium. In October 2012, 44 percent of UK smartphone owners performed at least one shopping activity whilst they were in a physical retail store.

The most popular in-store shopping activity for these smartphone owners was taking a picture of a product (42.3 percent). In second place with 36.9 percent was texting or calling friends/family about a product, followed by sending a picture of a product with 21.6 percent. It is interesting to note that 5.8 percent of these UK smartphone owners that use their phone for shopping activities, have also purchased online goods or services whilst in the store.

In the lead up to Christmas, the online retail category attracted 49.5 million unique visitors in Germany, 39.9 million in France and 39.6 million in the UK during November 2012. Amazon was the most popular online retailer in both Germany and the UK, with 32.7 million and 25.9 million unique visitors respectively. Home Retail Group was the second most popular online retailer in the UK (11.3 million) and Otto Gruppe came in second place in Germany with 15.1 million users.

In France, Groupe PPR took the top spot with 16.9 million unique visitors, but Amazon followed closely behind with 16.2 million during the month.

More than 5.7 million people in the UK visited online dating sites in September 2012, showing a 22-percent increase from the same month last year. POF (Plenty of Fish) was the most popular online dating site in September 2012, as nearly 1.5 million users spent an average of 115 minutes on the site.

25-34 year olds comprised nearly 1.3 million unique visitors in September 2012, making them the most active users of online dating sites in the UK. Interestingly, the demographic that has seen the most growth over the past year is the 55+ age group. Showing a 39-percent increase, the 55+ age group nearly reached the one million visitor mark in September 2012 for the first time.

In 2011, BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting Group) consistently ranked as the top display advertiser in the UK. In Q4 2011 alone, BSkyB accounted for over 4.4 billion ad impressions, nearly double the amount for BT Group (over 2.4 billion). In Q3 2012, however, BT Group seized the lead with nearly 2.6 billion ad impressions compared to BSkyB’s 2.4 billion.

In the past year, BSkyB’s display ad impressions have gone down by 62 percent from 3.9 billion in Q3 2011 to 2.4 billion in Q3 2012, suggesting a possible downshift in the company’s display advertising strategy. Virgin Group shows similar results, with ad impressions remaining fairly consistent throughout 2011 and early 2012 at approximately 3 billion, going down to 2 billion in the third quarter.