The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that every household in the UK has £430 less to spend today than they did in 2010, as household disposable income fell by 1.2 % last year, the biggest annual fall in spending power since 1977. However, going by the latest research from leading independent digital marketing agency, Greenlight, it seems this has not stifled UK consumer appetite for entertainment which would seem to have taken a thrifty, some might even say active and cultured route too.

The Agency’s latest report, ‘Entertainment Retail – Issue 8’ profiles online search behaviour in the entertainment retail sector, covering Gaming Consoles & Games, Going Out, Movies and Music. It also reveals the most visible brands, retailers and review sites in each sub-sector and assesses those that interacted well on social media networks.

What happened to the sound of music?
Greenlight’s report reveals there were 5.3 million searches made for entertainment-related keywords in January. Searches pertaining to movies and going out, accounted for the majority of these searches - 39% and 28%, respectively. This compares to a share of 25% for Gaming consoles & Games and a mere 8% for Music!

Movies - Online movies a real show-stopper
Movie-related searches accounted for more than 2.1 million in January with the term ‘Watch movies online’ accounting for 32% of all searches performed for the sub-sector. It was also the most popular search term overall. ‘Films’ followed with a 5% share.

According to Greenlight’s league table, the two most visible websites in the natural search* listings were Movie2k and Allu. Both attained a sizeable share of voice, achieving 46% and 45%, respectively.

Netflix was the most visible advertiser** online, achieving an 83% share of voice.

Going Out - ‘British museum’ tops ‘Buckingham Palace’, ‘Big Ben’ and ‘Madame Tussauds’
There were 1.5 million searches for going out-related terms. ‘British Museum’ attracted the most number of queries for this sub-sector – 135,000. ‘National History Museum’, ‘Science Museum’ and ‘Tate Modern’ followed with 110,000 searches a piece. By comparison ‘Buckingham Palace’ and ‘Madame Tussauds’ drew 74,000 each whilst ‘Big Ben’ and ‘London Shows’ managed 40,500 each.

Wikipedia was the most visible website in this sub-sector achieving a 61% share of visibility. Visit London ranked second in Greenlight’s league table with a 40% share of voice. In at third was the National History Museum with a 13% share of visibility.

Lastminute was the most visible advertiser with a 33% share of voice. Science Museum and Theatre People followed, each with a 32% share.

*Natural /organic Search - Listings in search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms

**Paid Media – an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.

Greenlight’s ‘Entertainment Retail - Issue 8’ report, profiles search behaviour in this sector. It assesses which brands, websites and review sites are the most visible in natural search, paid media, and social media and hence have the greatest share of consideration when UK-based searchers go to Google UK to search for entertainment-related products and services.

About Greenlight
For more information please visit www.greenlightdigital.com

London - 29 March 2012