Tuesdata: How the social giants stack up

Welcome to Tuesdata, where we pick apart the most interesting data in the media and marketing industry. 

How do some of the biggest social media brands stack up in Australia? Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram? 

The information is lying around cyberspace, sometimes in plain sight. Today I’ll piece together some of the most important parts to give you a better idea of how they stack up in terms of users, advertising revenue, reach and more. 

Some of the figures are certified numbers direct from the business, others are a best guess based on applying ratios from other examples.

The full content of this post is for Unmade’s paying members only. Others will hit the paywall a little lower down.

According to Data Reportal’s Digital Report 2022, 91% of the Australian population are internet users. That’s around 23.6m people. 

Of those people, there are 21.45m social media users. This figure is reported in both Data Reportal’s report as well as Meltwater from Statista information. That means about 83% of the total Australian population are reported to be social media users. But there is a caveat. One user doesn’t necessarily equal an individual, so the percentage of the Australian population using social media is likely to be less. 

It is virtually a sure bet that usage will continue to trend upwards across the variety of social media platforms, not least because mobile coverage and speed in Australia is getting significantly better. 

Network testing and analysis business Ookla reported that Australian mobile internet connection speeds increased by 25.1% in the 12 months to January 2022. Thanks 5G. That means an average connection speed now of 81.14Mbps. Gone are the days of social video lag. 

With that in mind it makes the social media landscape even more fascinating and important to the Australian media and marketing industry.

Below I’ll take a look at some of the main players and how they stack up. Sources for this post include the SMH, Bloomberg, Meltwater, Ookla, Data Reportal, TechCrunch, Chartr, The University of Canberra, Statista and more.