Takeaways from Mary Meeker’s Annual Internet Trends Report

‘Queen of the Net’ publishes 2019 internet findings

Mary Meeker released her annual Internet Trends Report at Recode’s Code Conference on June 12. The 333-slide presentation offers data and expert analysis on business-related trends over the past year, including insight into the state of e-commerce and online advertising.

General partner at venture capital firm Bond Capital, Meeker reports 3.8 billion internet users globally, making this the first year in which over half the world’s population is online. While this is a 6% year-over-year rise, user growth is decelerating. This trend holds important implications for e-commerce, which currently makes up 15% of all retail sales. Its growth rate continues to trend upward over physical sales but is slowing down.

While online advertising is showing solid revenue growth, and its potential for innovation is strong, customer acquisition costs are increasing in highly competitive sectors and may become unsustainable if they exceed customer lifetime values for too long.

Meeker cites analyzed digital data as a primary factor in the success of the fastest growing and most successful companies around the world as it empowers businesses to provide consumers with increasingly personalized products and services in an efficient manner. Google and Facebook continue to dominate among U.S.-based advertising platforms, but their revenue growth has slowed over the last quarter.

Meanwhile, platforms such as Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest are surging. Collectively, their U.S.-based revenue has increased by 2.6% since the first quarter of 2017.

In addition to the increased competition among platforms, Meeker attributes this trend in advertising revenue to new data privacy oversights, such as GDPR and stricter enforcement on iOS, that impact the reach of targeted ads on large platforms.

Meeker’s full report can be viewed and downloaded below.