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Digital Markets Act (DMA) impact on mobile browsers market share in Europe

Mobile browsers market share quick overview in the EU

Why do we care about mobile browsers market share? As internet traffic has switch to mobile devices (many websites have 4 out of 5 visits from mobile phones) is important for a digital marketer to know what the main browsers are used to access his websites. Market is dominated by Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari, 9 out of 10 EU users being fans of those browsers. Despite both browsers perform same action, there are differences in how they display a website or even how they track users, so we need to know what our audience technology is to improve the experience provided.

DMA will hit Apple more than Google

What requires DMA enforcement? Theoretically from March 2024 any update on iPhones or Google Android devices will prompt EU users with choice of their browser from a predefined list. The list of browsers is made upon availability and that will make a difference.

Going back to the process of choosing the browser there is no specific order to list the options, all are random displayed and does not have Safari listed. There is no official Apple Safari app listed on Google Play, there is a so-called iOS browser Safari app being listed by an unknown developer.

On the Apple side we have Google Chrome as one of the top-rated apps. Even many iPhone users stick with Safari as they are very familiar with, there were already others that preferred downloading Chrome and make it default browser (against Apple warnings). Now Apple will be forced to provide at first update the choice of browser and disable Safari as a default one. On iOS, despite Opera enthusiasm, we will see more people picking Chrome, that will improve his market share against Safari.

The other difference in mobile browsers market share will be made by EU Commission decision to not include Samsung Internet Browser as a dominant player. We will keep seeing Samsung smartphones delivered with this browser default, as well as for other Android brands that did not pick Chrome as default browser (like Xiaomi).  This will preserve Samsung Internet browser market share around 6,5% as it was in last 12 months.

Opera and Firefox may see some increase in their market share especially from Android users, less from iPhone users. Even this increase will be 100%, we won’t see major changes in terms of market share, probably over 2% for Opera, close to 2% for Firefox.

Chrome will keep going, Safari will keep losing market share on mobile devices

My estimate for next year is that Chrome will keep improving maybe up to 65% (last 12 months went to 61,35% from 58,52%).  Safari will drop at under 25%, probably 22-23% (last 12 months went to 28,66% from 31,61%). Samsung will stick at 6,5% and other browser versions will be small to count for. A detailed report of mobile browsers market share in Europe for the past 12 months is here.

Bottom line, Chrome and Safari will still be used by about 9 of 10 Europeans. Some two thirds of all European mobile internet users will use Chrome and less than one quarter will use Safari (two years ago was at his peak with one third of users).

As for the default search engine where DMA imposes same rule of free choice, we don’t have a real competitor for Google in the EU. However, there are AI tools that already have an impact over number of usual searches and the way searching process is evolving. That’s another topic to discuss.

How to track Facebook and Instagram ad spending on politics

If you are digital marketer that starts his first politics campaigns on Meta platform or just a citizen curious about ad spending made by some candidates on Facebook and Instagram you should know that there in an online public tool that allows tracking political ads. You can find data starting from 2018 for the United States or starting from 2019 in case of Romania or even more recently for other countries.

Meta Ad Library Report provides an overview with total ads and total amount spent for elections, politics or social issues and let you generate reports for a specific advertiser for a chosen period, as well as a list with all advertisers for last day, last week, last 30 days, last 90 days or all time. There is also a spending report per location, with top 10 spenders for each location. The data has 4 days delays, so any interval cannot be fresh than 4 days before the current one (most likely to protect server infrastructure when updating with new data and let queries flow from users).

As any data reported by Meta you should be aware about the disclaimer that numbers reported may differ slightly from numbers counted by Meta Ads Manager. In other words, no final numbers to consider, still a very good source to see different advertisers spending share for a period.

The main benefit of this reporting in my opinion is the access to all the ads used by an advertiser. Traditional media has a limited number of ads and creatives and is easy to collect all of it.  Digital media involves a lot of ads and creative and chasing around the internet takes time and makes impossible to gather all of it, so having all the collection stored by Meta is an excellent opportunity to analyze competitor creatives in depth.

As Romania is preparing for full election year I made a capture with top spenders on the last 30 days.

Meta elections ad spending Romania 16th Feb 16th March

Few comments:

  • Marcel Ciolacu, the current Prime Minister is leading the spending, even for now he has not opted for a specific position in the upcoming elections.
  • Nicusor Dan, the current Mayor of Bucharest is in the second position as he is running to win a second term. Strange that he spent 95% of budget in Bucharest, I would expect to see it full in this area. Could be a targeting error or a mismatch in Meta data?
  • European Parliament and European Commission are on the third and fifth spot. While the marketers from Parliament seem to know their job with 56 ads, those from the Commission don’t care too much about the spending with only 10 ads.

Grab the popcorn and enjoy the election race!

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