Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has presented her annual Internet Trends Report, a 157-slide story about where things stand in all-the-Internet… well, perhaps not all of the Internet, as there findings about the use of Internet services and tools by government at federal to state levels is not reported here, either for the US or internationally. But there’s enough here to gather some really powerful intel about topics that visual thinkers who are marketers, designers, digital developers and, happily, drone fanatics, will find important and worth bookmarking.

Print or pre-roll? where to put marketing dollars

While NiemanLab.org laments the obvious decline of print press, we can turn around and cheer the growth of mobile for advertising:

Mobile ad spendNo surprises here, really; even the greyist of ladies, the New York Times, has dug into providing news content that only lives on responsive web (read:mobile/tablet/phablet) platforms and devices.

Silver surfers? Not hardly

But let’s go back a minute, who’s on those responsive devices? Millennials. And they are WATCHERS, they are visual:

Internet Usage by Millennials

Internet Usage by Millennials (Source: 2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)

The writing isn’t on the wall, it’s on the smartphone. And, if it’s written, it’s accompanied by pictures or video. She doesn’t report on Bandwidth usage, but, for certain, every network is struggling over compression and usage, pushed even harder by consumer demand for high-res short and long form video content. And that pre-roll advertising I mentioned above. VR and AR are still just blips on the landscape. And do you remember 3D? It will be rolled into VR/AR, but as a stand-alone it’s apparently not worth mentioning anymore. At least not here.

Still no packages in the sky from Amazon, but how about seeding your farm?

Finally, the next point: she really doesn’t cover the Internet of Things (there’s a visual HT to the Apple Watch in one of the slides) or 3D printing in depth (both which tie to the Internet, and for IoT depends on internet deeply,) but she does go into the story of Drones, the darling of the IoT world. But her coverage isn’t about movie making or crashing onto the lawn of the White House: she focuses on commercial use, which has been held back by FAA/FTC regulations and uncertainty on how to allow for even more use of open air space, but here are findings that show that we are only at the tip of the iceberg for commercial drone usage that has nothing to do with Amazon or Google delivering packages to your home:

Done contracts for commercial use

Drone contracts for commercial use. (SOURCE: 2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)

The Long but short of it

The study is deep, and from its pedigree has great value to read not only this years edition but, if you have the interested, to dive backwards in time over previous years to see whether trends and predictions have lasted. While not making wild predictions or talking about what the internet will look like in 20 years, the study gives much to consider about where we are right now, and makes the point that we are not talking about fads like the latest software sweeping the market this week, or whether Facebook’s dominance will last.

It’s a useful tool if you need to consider where to turn your marketing dollars for advertising, based on age demographics, understanding users habits (again more by generational demographics moreso than income levels or other considerations you would use when building user personas), and if you just want to know what’s growing in popularity in the very big picture. Again, government use isn’t taken into consideration here, cloud, SaaS and PaaS aren’t mentioned really, and the music, entertainment and gaming industries, massive drivers of Internet use, don’t get individual breakouts. And what of the death of email, constantly predicted but never really seen?

Heath Care and Millennials, Millennials, Millenials

The report carries its reporting on Millennial habits and desires (regarding the workplace, for example) into detail, but not so for later generations of Internet users. In particular there are a few slides in the deck about health care services (more about whether or not they come from employers), full-time vs part-time and “freelance” work (I put that in quotes because there’s no strong use of the words “startup” or “entrepreneur”, and, though I might have missed it, no charting of VC investment trends in Internet (startup) companies.

And, again, where’s the cloud? Perhaps by 2014, which is where the data comes from, the cloud is just too 2013 to talk about, but I was surprised not to see numbers about that as it feels like we are far from done with the boom of services and mainstream adoption in business and industry for cloud-centric IT.

A HT to Security issues

The hits to Sony probably turned Security into the hot button for late 2014-2015, and there are some references to it here. However, nothing about online commerce via Bitcoin or virtual currency appears, maybe that will have a stronger showing in 2016.

The report truly requires a few reads, so bookmark this page, and add comments below on what you like, what is a new discovery, and what else is missing.

We’re responsive, for the most part, on this web site.