Highly anticipated report details the most important trends on the Internet

Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults now describe themselves as “almost constantly online.”

That’s just one of the many interesting stats contained in Mary Meeker’s annual “Internet Trends” presentation, which has grown into one of the most closely-watched reports of the year by tech investors and the tech community at large. A venture capital investor formerly with Silicon Valley investing giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meeker in September founded Bond Capital, which has raised $1.25 billion to date. She gave her report, in the form of a 333-slide presentation, at Recode’s Code Conference 2019.

More than 50% of the global population is now online, according to the report. Between 2009 and 2018, the percent of global internet users grew from 24% to 51% There are now 3.8 billion global internet users, up 6% year-over-year.

Here are some other interesting stats from the report, as reported by Recode.

• E-commerce is now 15% of retail sales. Its growth has slowed — rising 12.4 percent in the first quarter — but still towers over growth in regular retail, which was just 2% in the same.


• Innovation at tech companies outside the U.S. has remained robust. Popular areas include fulfillment, delivery, and payments.


• As of last week, seven out of 10 of the world’s most valuable companies by market cap are tech companies, with only Berkshire Hathaway, Visa, and Johnson & Johnson making the Top 10 as non-tech companies. Leading the list are Microsoft, Amazon and Apple.


• Internet ad spending rose 22% in the U.S. in 2018. Most of the spending is still on Google and Facebook, but companies such as Amazon and Twitter are getting a growing share. Some 62% of all digital display ad buying is for programmatic ads, which will continue to grow.


• Customer acquisition costs — the marketing spending necessary to attract each new customer — is going up. That’s unsustainable because in some cases it surpasses the long-term revenue those customers will bring. Meeker suggested  cheaper ways to acquire customers, like free trials and unpaid tiers.


• China represents  21% of the world’s total internet users, followed by India, 12%, and the U.S. 8%

To see Meeker’s complete presentation, click here.