PHARMA GEEK

This week I attended Business Insider‘s Ignition conference where the topic was “The Future of Digital.” The topics ranged from digital content to advertising, to the rise of the mobile web and e-commerce to social media and technology start-ups.

The speaker line-up was one of the best I have ever seen including CEOs Andrew Mason (Groupon), Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) and Jeffrey Bewkes (Time Warner), AOL Co-founder Steve Case, the Dr. Mehmet Oz, Futurists Jason Silva and Neil deGrasse Tyson and many, many more.

In this post, I will recap 16 of the best of the 137 slides presented by Business Insider CEO and Editor-in-Chief Henry Blodget on the state of the Digital landscape.

1. While sales of PCs continue to increase, there has been unprecedented growth in the sales of smartphones and tablets in the last 2-5 years.
2. Looking out to 2015, internet access from mobile devices including tablets will be a large majority of the broadband traffic. So the future is mobile.
3. Many people said that people wouldn’t pay for digital content. But digital content is exploding. This is led by iTunes and Netflix but others like Zynga, Dropbox and Spotify are growing as well.
4. Not everyone is celebrating. As news consumption moved online, some industries are being left behind. Print newspaper and magazine, as well as local and network TV advertising revenues are off significantly. While online and Cable TV advertising is up.
5. The decline in Newspaper ad revenue has been dramatic: off 400% in just 3 years and now below the inflation-adjusted level of the 1950s.
6. But after a dip in 2009, Total TV advertising revenue is up and looks healthy.
7. In the coveted 18-34 demograhic, behavior is changing rapidly to time-shifted DVR, streaming video and gaming as viewership of live TV is down sharply. This forces the question of how long TV advertising will continue to increase.
8. In the online advertising world, total online advertising is up and seems to be narrowing in on a 2-horse race between Google, Facebook and “other” as the main players.
9. Drilling into online ad revenues, display sales are flattening and only Google appears to be gaining any traction.
10. Although many predicted social advertising would finally bring down the banner, it is still a search-driven world as social networks accounts for a very small portion of referral traffic to e-commerce sites.
11. Mobile is turning us into 24/7 content consumers as evidence by peak pageview traffic by hour. PC access peaks around noon, while tablet and smartphone peaks at bedtime.
12. The gap between time spent and mobile ad dollars is making people bullish on mobile advertising.
13. Mobile platforms is also a 2-horse race between Apple and Android.
14. It’s the same story in tablets.
15. But where are all the Android users. Mobile traffic to e-commerce sites is largely driven by Apple devices. It makes you wonder if Android buyers are using their device to browse or shop.
16. Is the PC dead? No. Is TV dead? No. Is mobile the future? Yes. But we will continue to see the future of digital as a 4-screen world of TV, PC, tablet and phone.

You can also view and subscribe to all 137 slides from Business Insider on “The Future of Digital.”