Australians are a social bunch, and as a nation, we’re some of the biggest social media users in the world. Whether you’re wondering what your customers are doing or want to target them more effectively, this article will explore how and where Australians are spending their time online. Read on for our findings!
Australian Internet & Media Consumption at a Glance
Internet usage is increasing, with Australians, for the first time ever, spending over 6 hours on the internet per day (6hrs 14mins). Despite this increase in time online, media consumption has declined across most key categories, with TV viewing (both linear and steaming) down 15%, press consumption (includes online) down 44% and radio listening down 13%.
Social media also took a hit, down 10%, but this was the smallest shift amongst recorded categories. Nonetheless, Australians are spending on average 1 hour and 51 minutes on social media per day. There are currently 20.8 million Australians who are active social media users, with 92% of P16-64 using social media.
Australia’s Most-Used Social Media Apps: iOS and Android
Data provided by SimilarWeb shows that social media are some of the most-used apps on Australian phones, though there are notable differences between the apps favoured by iPhone and Android users.
Most notably, Threads is the the most-used social media app by iOS users, and the fourth most-used app by Australian iOS users overall. This is a rather puzzling position considering Instagram is only the third most-used social media app, and the 15th most-used by Australians overall. Does the company’s answer to X/Twitter really outrank its parent app by so much?
Meanwhile, Facebook and X sit just inside the top-50, at 45th and 46th respectively, and could easily drop out of the top-50 entirely if iOS users continue to abandon the platforms. Overall, social media apps appear less frequently and rank lower amongst the top-50 for iOS users than Android users.
For Android users, Threads doesn’t even rank in the 50 most-used apps, and the order of the rankings make a lot more sense, with Messenger, WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram claiming the top five spots, and all being amongst the 20 most-used apps on Android. As a whole, social media apps of all kinds feature more heavily in the top-50 for Android, with dedicated messaging apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram) accounting for more than a third of the social media apps in the top-50.
It’s hard to say why that is the case. It might be that Android users are simply more averse to texting natively on their devices, or it could be that because Android phones are generally considered the more ‘techie’ option, Android users are likely to use a greater number of apps than their Apple counterparts.
Why are people using the internet?
If people are using the internet more, why hasn’t this correlated into an increase in media consumption? It’s a valid question, and we suspect macro factors are at play.
The most obvious and spoken about is the current economic landscape, which has led to a time crunch with reduced media consumption as a result. In other words, internet usage has possibly increased because people are working longer hours or on their side hustle, leaving less time to scroll social feeds or watch the latest HBO series.
This is somewhat reflected in the top two reasons identified for internet usage, with both being functional uses rather than for personal enjoyment and connectivity.
Have we hit saturation point on social media?
Let’s be clear: social media usage is steady in terms of total people, this has not declined. But the decrease in time spent using social media has. This raises the question: Have we hit saturation point in social media usage?
We only have 24 hours in a day, so there was always going to be a ceiling here. With people generally being more mindful of how they spend their time, it appears the 2024 report has identified the limit of social media usage.
Our prediction here is we don’t expect social media usage to spike much higher than 2 hours per day in the future, rather we expect time spent on social media to remain steady.
The Social Media Landscape in 2024
Spending nearly two hours a day, and having about 6 social media accounts each, we still love our social media. Below are the key platforms in the Australian market and their active user base.
*note, only platforms with paid ad formats are included
With most social media users having multiple accounts across platforms, there is platform crossover and platform exclusivity. The below illustrates how scale can be increased or capped based on your mix of channels.
The Usual Suspects: Facebook and Instagram Still On Top
Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp continue to dominate the Australian market for social media usage, representing the four most used social media apps by users. Over 78% of Australians aged 16-64 are active Facebook users, steady on previous years and on par with YouTube usage. Messenger sits in second place, followed by Instagram and WhatsApp.
In fact, 84% of all Australians are on Facebook, with Meta’s flagship product hosting close to 23m users on our shores. Amongst these, those aged 25-34 (i.e, those who were Facebook’s target audience during its early growth phase) account for 25.3% of all users, followed by 18-24 year olds at 21.2%, and 35-44 year olds at 19.3%.
There are slightly more female users than male users within all age groups, with the exception the 0-17 year old subset, while within Australia, both New South Wales and Victoria are over-represented in terms of their number of users versus their share of the population.
As well as being the most used, Facebook (24%) and Instagram (19%) are still rated the most popular apps but are losing ground to TikTok (more on that in a moment). What would be interesting to know, and what isn’t provided with the data in the Digital Australia report is the breakdown of favourite platforms by demographic, as we suspect younger demos would overwhelmingly favour TikTok, in spite of their usage of other platforms.
While scale continues to be the drawcard to platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it is our view that this is driven by indoctrinated behaviour over preference for these platforms over other social media sites. Facebook turned 20 this year, and for early adopters, giving up 20 years of social connections, photos, comments and engagements is a big ask.
TikTok’s Continued Upward Trajectory
Arguably the darling of social media apps at the moment, TikTok continues building its momentum from the COVID years. Users have hit 9.7 million, making it the 5th most-used social media site in Australia behind Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. This represents a 17% growth year-on-year and means advertising on TikTok now has the potential to reach a third of all Australians.
As could be expected, TikTok is dominated by younger users, with 18-24 year olds comprising 42% of all users, with slightly more males (22%) than females (20%) in this demographic – a somewhat surprising revelation that is seen across all demographics. When charted on a graph, TikTok’s percentage of users makes a steady descent as their age rises, with 74.2% of users under the age of 35.
Like Facebook, both New South Wales and Victoria are over-represented in terms of their users compared to their share of the population, though we see a larger discrepancy in the number of users for Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT, with the Northern Territory having almost no TikTok users to speak of.
But it’s not only the number of people using TikTok that has grown. Where it is dominating its competition is in how much time users are spending on the platform. TikTok users are spending over 42 hours on the platform per month, double the next platform, YouTube.
While such an enormous difference may seem somewhat surprising when you consider the kinds of content each platform specialises in – long-form for YouTube and short-form for TikTok – it points to a major shift in how younger generations are choosing to consume media, as well as the fact that an endless stream of curated, bite-size pieces of content allows users to spend far more time on-platform than longer content where users have to make an active choice about what they view.
Snapchat’s Audience Is Dedicated
While not considered a primary player, Snapchat continues to have its place and its audience within the Australian social media landscape. There are still 7.8 million active users of Snapchat in Australia, with 77.3% of its audience being 13-34 years old. The percentage of male to female users is fairly close across the youngest demographics, with the discrepancy growing as users’ age increases.
However, what is most impressive is how dedicated Snapchat users are to their platform, with users recording over 600 app sessions a month, opening the app on average 20 times a day. This open rate is of course a result of Snapchat’s core function (the sending and receiving of photos and messages), but it is representative of Snapchat’s high usage, with users spending around 17 hours a month on the platform – a significant number given its relative scarcity of consumable content.
Snapchat users’ dedication to the platform is also reflected in their exclusive use of the platform. A GWI study from 2023 found that 39% of Snapchatters do not use Facebook on a daily basis – so they are active on other social platforms, but not engaged.
The Discovery Journey on Pinterest
Pinterest is by no means the biggest platform in Australia, but one could argue it is one of the most important for brands to take note of. Pinterest reaches 1 in 5 people, or 5.3 million Australians each month, but it’s who these users are and how they use Pinterest that is paramount.
Pinterest is overwhelmingly used by women, with 79% of Australian users being female. Of these, women aged 18-34 years old account for 46% of users, meaning that Pinterest’s largest user base is both digitally native and willing to spend. This is especially pertinent considering our next point.
While it doesn’t get the love or recognition it deserves from most attribution models (looking at you, last-click), very often Pinterest is the starting point for discovery and view-through attribution is very high. This is because 97% of pin searches on Pinterest are unbranded: they aren’t looking for Gucci, they’re looking for a designer purse.
In addition to this, consumers who are on Pinterest are less likely to be influenced by price. They are 10% more likely to be earning $200k or more a year, so they are less susceptible to the economic challenges we currently face, and are also willing to spend more to ensure quality.
Separate to paid media, Pinterest is a platform we strongly recommend brands use organically, as Pins are indexed across Google. This will have a positive impact on your organic and SEO ranking, and is why if you search for something on Google Images, a lot of your results are likely going to be from Pinterest.
The Anomaly of X, formerly known as Twitter
X/Twitter’s reported ad reach in Australia has increased by 847,000 users to 6 million users, making it the 9th most-popular social media platform in Australia. Of the main social platforms used, X is the one with the strongest male skew with 67% of users on-platform identifying as male. For comparison, Snapchat, which is relative in scale has a male skew of 46%.
Additionally, X ranks right near the bottom of the list in number of sessions, with users averaging only 72 sessions a month, or 2.5 sessions a day, for a total of 2.5 hours a month – well below the other big social media players that it is usually lumped in with.
Despite this, X stands as a strong source of referral traffic, accounting for 13.53% of all social media referrals in Australia. Additionally, 25.5% of Australians over the age of 18 are on X, with the platform having a potential ad reach of 6.1m people in Australia – a +16.1% change year-on-year, or an extra 847k people.
The increase in usage is surprising, given the platform’s highly publicised near-meltdown following Musk’s purchase in 2023, and all the talk of users fleeing X. So what’s driving the growth? Are people subscribing to it’s Netflix-style model? Is the freedom of publishing without censorship a greater pull than the content being factual or correct?
It is hard to say, but it is important to remember that although the news has been dominated by stories of advertisers abandoning X since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, it is still possible to advertise and be brand-safe on X.
In fact, there are some brands that lean into X as it effectively reaches its target audience, but we do acknowledge that there are anomalies in the data available to make informed advertising decisions.
Sitting in the second tier of social media platforms, only 3.4% of Australian social media users consider Reddit their favourite platform, positioning it above Pinterest, below Snapchat, and tied with X/Twitter. Despite this, Reddit is not an insignificant player in our social media market, with 6.6m users recorded in Australia.
These users are divided almost perfectly in line with each state’s percentage of the national population, with Victoria and New South Wales slightly over-represented, while Tasmania and the Northern Territory sit well under their share of the population.
Unfortunately, getting detailed insights into Reddit’s ad reach is difficult due to the platform not allowing you to target users by age, only by gender and on-platform interests. Additionally, Reddit’s total ad reach is far greater than its actual user base, due to the fact that you don’t need to be logged in to your Reddit account in order to see ads.
For this reason, we decided to only look at ad reach for gender-based targeting, as these are the people most likely to see and engage with your advertising. Amongst males, Reddit has an estimated ad reach of 3.4m users, and only 865,000 for females. Globally, 63.6% of Reddit users are male, and if estimated ad reach is anything to go off, the skew may be even bigger in Australia.
However, although we lack insight into the demographics of Reddit’s Australian users, figures out of the US give us a good indication of the likely demographic split. As a general rule, Reddit is a young person’s platform, although its inclusive, community-based nature means it is far more accessible to older users than platforms such as Snapchat or TikTok.
Additionally, in a 2021 submission to Parliament, Reddit itself noted that 90% of its Australian user base is over the age of 18 – a percentage that has likely remained unchanged, even with Reddit’s growth in the subsequent years.
And while Australians only comprise 4.16% of Reddit’s total global users, that figure is enough to make us the fourth-largest users of the platform in the world – something that no doubt factored into Reddit’s decision to open an Australian office in 2021.
Sitting just ahead of Pinterest as 28.9% of internet users’ favourite social media platform, LinkedIn has a potential ad reach of 15m people within Australia, up 1m on 2023. The largest cohort of LinkedIn users are aged between 25 and 34, and account for 52.1% of all users, followed by the 35-54 bracket, with 25.7% of users, 18-24 year olds with 16.9%, and those aged 55+ with 5.3% of users.
That young professionals in the prime of their careers make up the majority of a professional networking platform’s users should come as no surprise, and nor should the fact that male users outnumber female users in three out of four demographics on a social media platform that has developed a reputation for self-congratulation and braggadocio.
LinkedIn’s distribution of users around Australia presents no surprises either, with New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT (i.e., the nation’s professional hubs) over-represented in their share of users compared to their share of the national population, while Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory are under-represented.
Interestingly, Western Australia’s share of LinkedIn users is exactly in accordance with its share of the national population, a possible sign of the growth of Perth’s professional sector – and the need for a strong professional sector given its isolation from Australia’s other major centres – and the role it plays in supporting the state’s traditional extractive industries.
Why Are You Considering a Paid Social Media Strategy?
How Are Audiences Discovering You?
It’s no secret that media has been fragmenting over the past decade. TV viewing is no longer linear, radio listening is more broadly defined as audio streaming and print circulation continues to decline in favour of its digital counterparts. Along with this fragmentation comes a shift in how audiences discover brands. No longer can you run a national TVC and expect 4 million people to see it. Social media ads are increasingly becoming a source of brand discovery for consumers, with 29% of people new products from social media ads. This is quickly catching up to TV and is now double the brand discovery achieved by radio ads
Audiences Are Doing Their Due Diligence
Like a questionable date from Tinder, audiences are more considered and wary of how they engage and purchase from brands. This includes more brand research before making a purchase decision. While the usual suspects of search engines, reviews and brand websites hold the top 3, social media is a source many are turning to to gauge authenticity.
Is the brand real? Are they posting regularly? Is the content spammy? Are their social accounts littered with complaints and dissatisfied customers? While a paid social strategy doesn’t necessarily address these concerns, investing in social advertising will show that you are legitimate in trying to engage with your audience.
Trust Retain Media for Social Media Insights
We will continue to monitor Australia’s social media market and report on any changes and developments over the coming year. In the meantime, be sure to check out our other Insights for industry-leading tips and tricks for SEO, social, and PPC advertising.
If you’re struggling to stand out online, we can help. As automotive industry experts, we’ve worked with some of Australia’s most recognisable brands to deliver thousands of quality, qualified leads every month. Contact us today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation and start connecting with your customers.
