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Digital Trends Survey

29 October 2009

Positive signs - the results from our fourth survey of Industry Sentiment

MitchelLake Digital Industry Survey Results

Our 4th Industry Survey took a slightly different angle to previous surveys. In order to gauge the ongoing industry sentiment we have kept a number of core questions so we are able to make comparisons throughout the year. You’ll notice this survey has a slight skew towards online retail and social media, a couple of exciting and, so it seems, rapidly evolving sub sectors of the digital space!

Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey, we have again had a great response rate indicating continued interest, which is fantastic! We’d love any feedback you may have on how we can continue to improve and evolve the survey, and are always open to suggestions on hot topics you’d like us to explore on your behalf.

Here are the key findings from the survey:

Overall, our findings reveal what is currently a pretty positive attitude in the online & technology industries, with an increase in predicted business growth, a decrease in expected headcount reduction and less of you under the belief these sectors are in recession.

These results indicate that the online media & technology markets are in growth mode, with more than half (53%) of our participants indicating that they believe the industry is showing signs of growth. Only 8% of respondents believe the online media & technology sectors are in recession, up from the 50.6% of you who indicated in our June survey that you believed our industry was in recession.


CHART 1



73% of you are predicting 5 – 10% or more growth in your business in the next 12 months, a positive indication that the industry is continuing to head in the right direction. A quick look back at our February results revealed that at that time, more than 29% of business’ were forecasting zero or negative growth in the following 12 months. It looks as though we are predicting the strongest growth areas within our industries for 09/10 will be mobile applications & content (30%) and cloud computing & web services (28%).

CHART 8



What does all of this positive sentiment mean for employment? Back in June of this year, 27% of respondents to the survey indicated they expected to see employee number reduced within 6 months. This quarters results show only 11% of participants expecting to see decreased headcount in their business.
Lets look at some social media findings. More than half of respondents (53.7%) to our survey revealed they either know of someone, or have themselves successfully used social media for job seeking. We can also see a continued trends towards social media in business, with an increase from 66.8% to 75.5% in the number of people stating they are currently using social media tools for business purposes.

One of the more interesting findings from this quarters survey was around which of the broadcasters are viewed as the more digitally progressive. The ABC came out the clear winner 44% of participants voting them the most digitally progressive, followed by FOXTEL (21%), Channel 10 (10%) and Channel 7, 9 and SBS all receiving less than 10%.

CHART 9



What about online retail in Australia? A whopping 88% of us believe that the major retailers could be doing much more within the online space. Interestingly, 52.8% of participants spend between $100-$500 per month online shopping for personal goods, with only 11% of us spending more than $500 per month.

Again thanks to everyone who contributed to this quarters survey. Please feel free to drop me a line at Jacinta@mitchelLake.com with any thoughts, questions, ideas, feedback you may have!

Written by: Jacinta Coyle

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