Comscore’s digital audience measurement data in March 2021 allow us to trace a picture of the online behavior of the Italian digital population (40.2 million unique visitors) one year after the start of the pandemic and to confirm that the health emergency has accelerated and consolidated the use of the network.
Considering the Italian adult population, the penetration of internet use is therefore equal to 74%, an increase of 4 percentage points compared to twelve months ago.
News sites kept their audience stable compared to last year, going from 38.1 million unique visitors in March 2020 to 38.2 million in March 2021 (with a penetration of 95%), while the world’s audiences of entertainment recorded a growth of 3% with 38.8 million unique visitors (they were 37.7 in March 2020), reaching 97% of the Italian digital population.
Similarly, Social Networks and Instant Messaging also see substantially flat reach (+ 1%) compared to last year, with 37 and 34 million unique monthly visitors respectively, despite the significant growth within the category. of TikTok, today over 10 million unique visitors (+ 59% year on year), and fourth social network in Italy for unique users.
The year-on-year variation of + 2%, which led the Retail category to reach an audience of 37.3 million visitors (93% reach), also allowed it to surpass the Social Networks in March 2021. This was made possible above all thanks to the growth in the audience of e-commerce for home furnishings and bricolage (+ 16%) and sports and outdoor items (+ 21%).
On the other hand, the growth in March 2021 of some categories not yet close to the saturation of visitors is appreciable, such as for example the Sport sites, which compared to March 2020 (at the beginning of which the football championship stopped) recorded a growth of 8 % in terms of unique visitors, today equal to 31 million, or 77% of the Italian digital population.
Penetration similar to that of Health sites, whose number of visitors stands at 31.4 million: the figure shows a slight increase (+ 1%) compared to last year; while it remains unchanged for the Government sites which confirm a total of 21.4 million unique monthly visitors, in line with March 2020.
The data becomes particularly relevant if we consider that the two categories in the 12 months preceding the start of the health emergency (March 2019 – February 2020) respectively reached an average of 25 million and 14 million unique monthly visitors, and today still maintain growth of 13 and 17 percentage points in terms of reach% on the digital population (in March 2021 equal to 78% for the Health world and 53% for Government sites).
The time spent represents another important indicator that helps in understanding the change in the behavior of Italians online in the last twelve months of the pandemic.
Overall, the growth of time spent online is equal to 3% compared to March 2020 (when there was still a considerable + 36% compared to the previous year), and becomes + 7% if we look only at the mobile component (the last year at + 43%), which today represents 82% of all time spent online (twelve months ago the share of mobile was 78%).
If at the outbreak of the pandemic the News category had been one of the categories that most of all had benefited from the most time spent online by Italians (recording a growth of 129% compared to March 2019), twelve months later we are witnessing a phase adjustment by the national digital audience, which spent 26% of the time spent on news sites less than twelve months ago.
Similarly, Instant Messaging and Social Networks did not experience new peaks after March 2020, losing as in the case of Instant Messaging 8% of the total time spent, or at most by replicating the levels of time spent twelve months ago. as in the case of Social Networks, where in any case there is a shift in engagement towards younger social networks such as Instagram (+ 89%) and above all TikTok (+ 149%).
On the other hand, those who have managed to capitalize on the attention of Italians online in the long run are the video and audio streaming players and e-commerce, which especially after the summer see the time spent constantly growing up to the positive changes year on year of 26% for Entertainment and 19% for Retail recorded in March 2021. Such growth was made possible thanks to the performance of subjects such as Spotify (+ 105%), Sky Italia (+ 32%) and PrimeVideo ( + 310%) on the one hand, and on the other by Shein (+ 717%), Zalando (+ 89%) and newcomers such as Vinted, today the first mobile app retail in Italy for average time spent per visitor.
Demographic composition
Generally speaking, Italian adult users connect online for an average of 2 hours and 53 minutes a day, in line with what was recorded a year ago, but in this respect the demographic gap has further increased.
In March 2021, the youngest 18-24 spend an average of 3 hours and 42 minutes online a day (in March 2020 it was 3 hours and 19 minutes), an average level of time spent much higher than the 3 hours and 3 minutes of the 25 -34 year olds, 2 hours and 56 minutes for 35-44 year olds and 2 hours and 39 minutes for the 45+ range.
Then, by observing the composition of the average time per visitor on the individual categories, it can be observed that for the younger group of 18-24 year olds, the Entertainment (29%), Social Networking (28%) and Instant Messaging (16%) categories show a strong polarization , more pronounced than that observed on other demographic groups.
“It is now clear that the pandemic has accelerated the digitization of the country, especially on certain categories of content such as health and public administration which were suffering a traditional delay – says Fabrizio Angelini CEO of Sensemakers, which exclusively represents Comscore in Italy. – Observing the trends over the last 15 months, it is however possible to identify the structural and constant growth trends of some sectors (Entertainment and Retail above all), which are destined to continue even after the hoped-for end of the health emergency, compared to temporary discontinuities generated by the lockdown phases and the related change in lifestyles “.