ExchangeWire Research’s weekly roundup brings you up-to-date research findings from around the world, with additional insight provided by Rebecca Muir, head of research and analysis, ExchangeWire. In this week’s edition: Revenue growth for UK digital publishers; CMOs rely on agencies; and UK users engage strongly with shopping apps.

Revenues for UK digital publishers on the rise

Good news for publishers: in the UK, revenues for digital publishers have risen by 62% since 2012. That is according to the Q1 2016 Digital Publishers Revenue Index, compiled by the AOP in conjunction with Deloitte.

According to the index, the total digital revenue generated by publishers in Q1 2016 amount to £100.5 m. That is an increase of 8.3% year-on-year.

Drilling deeper, the index reveals that the main winner is online video. Video revenue grew 43%, compared to the same quarter in 2015. Display advertising, although accounting for ­ 35% of the total revenue ­generated, decreased by 8% year-on-year. Other growth areas were subscriptions (29%), and sponsorship (27%).

“The Q1 2016 DPRI shows publishers’ digital revenues are continuing to grow steadily and highlights the beginning of the shift away from display towards more creative ways of monetisation, including online video and sponsorship advertising”, says Richard Reeves, MD, AOP. “This is a trend we expect to continue throughout 2016.”

Between April 2015 and March 2016, digital revenues of UK publishers amounted to a total of £411.4m, an increase of 6.2% year-on-year. Mobile revenues experienced little growth during this period (2.6%).

CMOs appreciate agency partners

MediaMath summarise insights from a survey of more than 70 CMOs and marketing executives who reign over budgets of USD$1m (£0.69m) and more. According to the poll, 62% of the respondents said their agency is accessing and activating at least some of their first-party data for advertising efforts. Other areas that CMOs rely on agencies to help with are audience insights and optimisation best practices (59%), as well as ownership and activation of data (55%).

When it comes to choosing an agency partner, 30% of CMOs cited transparency a top priority in agency relationships, referring both to services and media buys, and to the communication between agency and brand.

More than two-thirds (68.9%) of the respondents believe that a technology partner could add value to the agency relationship in terms of maximising their ROI, while over a third said that tech partners could significantly contribute to management and activation of first-party data, as well as better measurement through more sophisticated attribution (36.6% respectively).

In summary, the majority of CMOs (56.72%) consider partnership between martech partners and agencies as important for the success of brands.

Jocelyn Hayashi, SVP, global agency practice for MediaMath, commented: “In this rapidly evolving marketing ecosystem, brands must increasingly incorporate programmatic best practices across their entire marketing strategy and gain a deeper understanding of how to best engage and leverage agencies to fulfill their goals.”

UK show highest engagement rate with shopping apps

When it comes to engaging with shopping apps, UK consumers are at the top of the pile. Research by Cheetah Mobile reveals that UK consumers interact an average of 102 times per month with such apps – double the engagement rate of US users.

But, shopping apps are not the UK users’ favourite apps: most of the apps used by UK consumers are communication apps. In a global ranking, the UK shows the second-highest rate of communication app usage with 2.7 apps per user, per month, trailing behind India with 3.7 apps per user, per month.

Taking a closer look at Android users, the research counted an average of 39 times that apps are engaged with per user per month. The number of apps used on average by users on a monthly basis, is 27. Communication and social apps are used 3- to 10-times more than other apps.