Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Here’s a link to the mp3 of my second podcast in the Ten Minutes Older series. What follows is an overview of the online landscape in Ireland. I recorded it over a fortnight ago and it’s already slightly out of date. I’m in the habit of collecting relevant statistics on the subject so I’ll update this in the future. In the meantime, some extra information that might be of interest. Join me in three weeks time for an overview of the media landscape in Ireland.

The Irish Times reports (subscription required) that the eleven most visited websites in Ireland as listed in the ABC’s Island of Ireland audited websites report are:

1.Daft.ie - 38.8 million page impressions and 573,914 unique users - audit period Sept 06
2. Carzone.ie - 34.8 million page impressions and 470,048 unique users - audit period Jan 07
3. Myhome.ie - 26.4 million page impressions and 339,233 unique users - audit period Sept 06
4. Eircom - 23.9 million page impressions and 1 million unique users - audit period Oct 06
5. RTÉ - 23.1 million page impressions and 1.1 million unique users - audit period Oct 06
6. Ireland.com - 17.3 million page impressions and 1.2 million unique users - audit period March 07
7. Propertynews.com - 12.1 million page impressions and 254,536 unique users - audit period Aug 06
8. Irishjobs.ie - 9 million page impressions and 413,766 unique users - audit period Jan 07
9. Pigsback.com - 9.4 million page impressions and 247,472 unique users - audit period Nov 06
10. Monster.ie - 3.1 million page impressions and 158,644 unique users - audit period Sept 05
11. Skoool.ie - 788,008 page impressions and 20,714 unique users - audit period Nov 02

EDIT/ Jenni from Statcounter points out that companies have to pay to get an ABC audit, so it’s not entirely inclusive.

And here’s the script of the podcast for those who don’t want to listen:

Ireland is interesting in many respects. We lag behind most of Europe in many broadband league tables. Broadband penetration currently stands at 12.5%, which is below the European average of 18.6%. However that is a marked improvement, as the penetration level stood at 5.3pc just over a year earlier.

The popularity of social networking sites, Bebo in particular, and other online services such as YouTube and Xbox Live, is exploding, leading to an increase in demand for broadband. Ireland also lives up to its stereotype, we just love to talk, and have one of the highest mobile penetration rates in Europe. Outside of South Korea, Ireland also has the highest PS2 penetration rate in the world. While mobile and PS2 penetration rates may seem slightly irrelevant to the topic I am discussing, they have a major influence on the direction on what the online landscape in Ireland is likely to look like in the future.

But first, let us look at the lie of the land. Broadband subscriber figures have steadily increased over the past couple of years,currently standing at 517,000 subscriptions. They doubled from approximately 176,000 in the second quarter of 2005 to approximately 372,000 in 2006. We ended the year with 430,000 subscribers and Noel Dempsey, Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, set a target of 700,000 broadband subscribers by the end of 2007. We have one of the lowest broadband penetration rates in Europe, a fact highlighted by a statistic disclosed to me recently by someone who runs a popular website that 42% of their visitors were on a dialup connection.

So what is the population doing online? An estimated 935,000 people use a computer every day while an estimated 638,000 used the Internet at least once a day. No surprise that the most popular activity online is search, which is followed by email. In terms of shopping habits, the top three Irish internet purchases were travel and holiday accommodation, tickets for events and books.

In terms of online banking, one of Ireland’s leading banks offers some insights into how Irish consumers use the service. According to AIB, one of the most frequently used services on its site is the bill-pay option. Ireland has a soaring level of consumer debt, so it comes as no surprise that credit card bills is the most common debt to be paid. Our high mobile penetration rate also has an influence on online banking, with mobile top-up usage levels growing 30pc in the past year, with an average top-up value of €15.36. Online banking services are also most commonly used between 9am and 10am as consumers check just how much is left in their balance from the night before and plot how to last until the end of the month.

Now let us turn to social media. According to Wikipedia, social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. A few prominent examples of social media in action are Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube and Second Life.

Ireland bucks the trend slightly when it comes to social networks as Bebo dwarfs the popularity of MySpace. The social networking website has over one million Irish users. The site has a broad base with users varying from 13 - 35 years of age. 1 in 3 Bebo users are between the ages of 13 to 17 and users are typically based in urban areas due to broadband rollout in the country. These areas are Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.

Looking at other social media tools, 25% of Irish Internet users claim to download podcasts and 22% read blogs regularly. However it should be noted that these technologies only appeal to a certain section of society like other parts of the world. The statistics which I have just mentioned can be turned on their head as 70% of Irish internet users never download ‘podcasts’ and 73% never read blogs.

Although niche and in its infancy, the Irish blogging community is going from strength to strength. Organiser of the Irish Blog Awards, Damien Mulley, recently said that the number of Irish people blogging has increased from around 1,000 to between 3,000 and 4,000 people. Ireland’s top blogs include Mulley’s own site, mulley.net, as well as beaut.ie, blogorrah.com, tomrafteryit.net and twentymajor.net. Twenty Major is an anonynmous blogger who has just signed a book deal which is another indication that blogs. To get a flavour of the Irish blogosphere, it is worth visiting Irishblogs.ie, a popular blog aggregator that compiles content from the majority of Irish blogs.

The impact of all these technologies was noted by the Sunday Tribune which recently reported on comments by eircom’s chief technology officer Geoff Shakespeare, where he said that growing popularity of video and music downloads, online tax returns, YouTube and other social networking sites and online gaming has caused demand for internet bandwidth in Ireland to rise 800% on Eircom’s network since April 2005.

This is set to be fuelled by the launch of the PS3. Despite its hefty price tag, Irish shoppers have been queuing in their droves to get their mitts on the console. The Xbox 360 is already firmly established in the hearts of Irish gamers. Although its Xbox Live service is vastly superior to what is currently on offer by Sony and Nintendo, both of Microsoft’s rivals have put more emphasis on the Internet. One of the key challenges facing the telecommunications industry is to provide a network that has the capacity to provide for the demands of gamers, as well as other services which will grow in popularity over the coming years such as video-on-demand.

As I previously mentioned, Irish people love to talk. We have a mobile penetration rate of 111%, with 4.4 million mobile subscribers, and Irish mobile companies have one of the highest ARPUs. ARPU is an acronym for Average Revenue Per user. In terms of mobile usage, in 2005 Irish mobile users sent 4.4 billion text messages, equating to 1,053 per person. The number of voice messages transmitted in 2006 was 5.7 billion.

Mobile revenues however have plateaued and like the rest of the world there is a lot of focus on the mobile phone and the Internet. Bebo is rumoured to be in negotiations with one of the big mobile companies in Ireland, a move which could match the success of Helio in the States. Helio allows it users to access MySpace portal which its subscribers can use to access their mailbox, bulletins, blogs, photos, and profiles from their mobile device. The company is on track to rack up 100,000 subscribers and that their customers are spending $100 on average per month. However the makeup of the mobile market in Ireland is different to other parts of the world, with the Pay-As-You-Go model proving to be exceptionally popular, especially with younger audiences. This throws up a challenge for those hoping to emulate Helio’s success as Pay-As-You-Go users typically use voice and SMS services.

Like the rest of the world, the online landscape in Ireland is quickly evolving and I have no doubt that in a year’s time this podcast will be sorely out of date. But until then, thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast.

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