Internet growth slows, but Web 2.0 still where it’s at

Writing for the CIPR pollster Sir Robert Worcester argues that the internet is not the be all and end all because while advertisers now spend more online than on newspapers, not all are addicted to the web and take up is slowing. Meanwhile, the Pew Internet & American Life project reveals that ‘half of all American adults are only occasional users of modern information gadgetry’.

Yet advertisers wouldn’t be putting so much into digital campaigns if they weren’t working. Those Pew classifies as ‘off the network’ – fifteen per cent of American adults – have a median age of 64 and 46 per cent earn less than $30,000 (£15,000). John Merry, leader of Salford City Council one of Greater Manchester’s poorest areas, recently told those at a debate on the BBC’s move north that just twenty per cent of the city’s homes were online.

The internet’s slower growth is most likely a side effect of a general failure to bridge a digital divide that makes the less well off invisible to what Pew calls Elite Tech Users (31 per cent of American adults). Ad spend tends to be directed at those with money, as is commercial public relations activity, so those Web 2.0 social networking skills will remain much sort after.

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