7 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

It’s been a notable week for digital marketing stats, with new studies, developing news and industry trends. Here are the seven items that caught our eye:

1. Apple is winning against the FBI in the court of public opinion
The Apple-FBI dustup this week has struck a nerve with many people because it represents an unusual confluence of a popular consumer brand, privacy and terrorism. Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected a court order to disable the iPhone’s auto-erase function, which removes all data from the device after 10 failed attempts to break into it. The feds’ demand was related to a phone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino, Calif., shooter who gunned down 14 people on Dec. 2.

Some saw it as a risky branding move on the part of Cook and Apple, but when Vrge Analytics surveyed 600 people on Feb. 18 and 19, it found that 65 percent don’t believe Apple should be forced to unlock the shooter’s iPhone.

2. Advertisers are still lukewarm on podcasts
Advertisers are expected to spend $35.1 million on podcasts this year, says media agency ZenithOptimedia in The Wall Street Journal. Even though the format has exploded since Serial took off a little over a year ago, that figure represents just a 2 percent year-over-year increase.

3. City of the future
CityBridge plans to install at least 7,500 of its LinkNYC smart kiosks (and possibly as many as 10,000) around New York in the next few years, making Gotham one of the largest digital out-of-home networks in the world. Brands will be able to leverage the network with ads and interactive bells and whistles.

4. Is Periscope the key to your next gig?
Tim Menko and Ingmar Larsen are 30-year-old ad creatives in Amsterdam looking for full-time gigs in their adopted hometown as well as freelance work around the world. So earlier this week, they turned to livestreaming app Periscope to drum up interest in their talents. They reached their target audience—according to the duo, more than 100 people tuned in to the live presentation on their Periscope account (@MenkoLarsen) during the 35-minute presentation, with another 20 watching the replay during the 24 hours Periscope leaves clips online after the fact.

“It went really well,” said Menko “We got some great responses and are visiting three agencies in Amsterdam. Plus, a recruiter in London says he has got something for us, and we have scheduled in a Skype meeting [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][with him]. There was even an agency in Cape Town that would like to collaborate with us.”

5. Mobile commerce continues to soar
Bizrate, a division of Connexity, asked 9,142 online buyers in the U.S. and Canada about their device habits and learned that 73 percent use their smartphones to shop and that 21 percent use them to shop when they’re actually inside brick-and-mortar stores.

6. Latinos shop more on their smartphones
Hispanic shoppers are 36 percent more likely than non-Hispanics to use mobile devices to access digital shopping tools, per Epsilon’s recent survey of 2,500 consumers.

7. Danica reps Lyft
Lyft had Nascar star Danica Patrick pose as a driver for the ride-sharing service in a prank-style video, and it’s turned out to be a nice win for the brand. The clip, which you can watch below, has nearly 467,000 views in the past 30 hours on YouTube and Facebook.