Media Use Index 2017: How the Swiss use the media

Media Use Index 2017: the key facts

• Daily newspapers are the losers of the media change: for the first time, they are in last place in terms of media use by case.
• Facebook beats Google on the smartphone: The three most popular smartphone apps all belong to the Facebook group.
• Silver surfers also consume media digitally: SRF1 is the last non-digital brand in the top 5 among the over-55s.
• News spreads via social media platforms and push notifications: The front page of news portals is losing its importance, especially among digital natives.
• Facebook is aging: Instagram is more relevant for digital natives than Facebook for the first time.
• Musicians are the most followed influencers across all generations.
• Streaming instead of live TV: The consumption of TV content via streaming is growing disproportionately and will soon overtake live TV.
• Augmented reality is already a reality: 30 percent use AR apps on their smartphone, although the technology is still in its infancy.

Paid daily newspapers bring up the rear

Paid daily newspapers continue to lose readers in 2017. Just 47% of the Swiss resident population still consume this medium at least occasionally. This puts daily newspapers in the red lantern for the first time. Internet use via smartphone, on the other hand, continues to increase and, at 89%, has reached the same level as computer use for the first time. The use of TV, radio and free newspapers remains constant.

Android continues to grow, iOS stagnates

Google's smartphone operating system continues to gain ground, while the growth of iOS is stagnating. Currently, 53% of respondents use an Android smartphone, while the share of Apple's iPhone remains at 43%. Windows Phone (which is no longer being developed by Microsoft) is still at 7 percent, while BlackBerry is tending towards zero.

Women text, men talk

Writing and reading messages via WhatsApp, iMessage and similar services remains the most popular activity for Swiss people on their smartphones. Across all generations, the smartphone is establishing itself as a smart messenger, as it is used more often for texting than for making calls. On a weekly basis, 96% of digital natives, 92% of digital immigrants and 85% of silver surfers are writing and reading messages this year.

On the other hand, phone calls are less frequent: 72% of digital natives make a call at least once a week, 76% of digital immigrants and 69% of silver surfers. There is also an important difference between the sexes: Women text more often, while men prefer to talk on the phone. 83% of women say they send text messages every day, compared to 74% of men. The opposite is true for phone calls: 49% of men make phone calls every day, but only 36% of women.

The Facebook group dominates the smartphone. What about Google?

The influence of the Facebook group is impressively demonstrated by the Swiss population's favorite apps. The top three positions are occupied by WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, all of which belong to Mark Zuckerberg's company. These are followed by the 20 Minuten app and the weather app, each with a share of 10%, as further favorites of smartphone users. There is no app from Google in the top 5.

Transactions via smartphone continue to rise unabated

The use of smartphones as a transaction device is continuously increasing. In the meantime, 71% of respondents have already made a purchase using their smartphone. 59% use it for mobile banking, and 42% have also used it for payments or peer-to-peer transfers. PayPal continues to be the strongest driver of mobile payment transactions, while Twint, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are still at a comparatively low level.

Digital brands almost dominate the top 5

While the top 5 most important media and digital brands among digital natives have been exclusively digital since 2012 and among digital immigrants since 2016, this is now also only a matter of time for silver surfers: in 2017, only SRF 1 remains in the top 5 as a non-digital brand in this age group.

The front page of online news providers continues to lose importance

News platforms are not only fighting for their general relevance, but also for the importance of their "front page" in particular. Across all generations, the proportion of people who come across news directly via the front page of news portals is falling. More and more people are finding out about relevant news online first via social media or push notifications. Among 14 to 29-year-olds, these two news channels together are more important than online news portals for the first time.

Instagram is more important to digital natives than Facebook for the first time

For digital natives, Instagram is more important than Facebook for the first time. Snapchat has also become significantly more important in this age group compared to the previous year. WhatsApp is in a league of its own and remains the most important social network platform. Twitter is stagnating and continues to bring up the rear: only 15% of digital natives consider the microblogging service to be important.

The most followed influencers are musicians

Influencers are the new VIPs. 59% of social media users virtually follow at least one influencer. Influencers are people who have built up a wide-reaching community through their activities on social networks, in which they have a high level of relevance and credibility and can therefore influence opinions. Musicians and actors are particularly popular influencers among the Swiss. 66% of digital natives who are active or passive on social media, for example, follow one or more musicians; this figure is 57% among digital immigrants and 42% among silver surfers. The new social media stars are also very popular with 49% of digital natives.

Streaming will soon overtake live television

Streaming is becoming increasingly popular: over half of Swiss people, i.e. 52%, stream TV content at least once a week. In contrast, weekly consumption of live TV is falling continuously and now stands at just 57%. The shift from live TV to streaming even accelerated in 2017; if it continues in the future, streaming will soon displace traditional live TV from the top spot. This changing of the guard has already taken place among digital natives: Streaming is the dominant way of consuming moving image content in this age segment.

Netflix is unstoppable and takes the lead

In terms of paid streaming services, Netflix has the most users for the first time, taking the lead. While Netflix achieved significant growth compared to the previous year, the other providers lost customers: Swisscom TV (incl. Teleclub) is in second place, followed by Apple TV, Zattoo and UPC Horizon.

Augmented reality - the start of a new technology chapter

Augmented reality (AR) is developing into a new key application for smartphones. The two technology giants Apple and Google are massively promoting AR applications with corresponding hardware and software. With Apple's ARKit for iOS and Google's ARCore for Android, tools have just been launched on the market that can be used to develop AR apps for smartphones. Overall, 30% of Swiss people have already used an AR application on their smartphone at some point, with this figure rising to 59% among 14 to 29-year-olds. The two dominant use cases are photo frames (63%) and games (47%).

About the "Media Use Index" study

The Media Use Index study by Y&R Group Switzerland examines the media usage and information behavior of the Swiss population every year. For the cross-comparison, the study divides the online population into three generations: Digital Natives (14-29 years), Digital Immigrants (30-54 years) and Silver Surfers (55-69 years). The study was first conducted in 2009 and is now in its ninth edition in 2017. For this purpose, 2,000 people between the ages of 14 and 69 from German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland were surveyed online about their media usage behavior. The sample is representative according to the official structural data for Switzerland. The Y&R Group Switzerland is one of the leading communication agencies in Switzerland and is based in Zurich. It unites the specialists from Advico Y&R (Modern Campaigning), Futurecom (E-Business Solutions) and Wunderman (Data Driven Marketing) under joint management.