Digital 2025: Global Overview Report

Team Locowise posted on 7 February 2025

Locowise is a proud data partner of the Global Digital Reports, published by Datareportal in partnership with We Are Social and Meltwater.

The Global Digital Report round-up for January 2025 provides invaluable insights into the current state of the digital landscape. 

With more than 630 pages to explore, we’ve pulled together some of the top points within the report. Please note, the headlines below barely scratch the surface of the full insights you’ll find in the report as it’s jam packed with details.

We recommend setting aside a good amount of time to digest it all as it’s worth the investment. The report is free to download and read.

Activity Online

• The amount of time that the world spends online has also been increasing over recent months, albeit only gradually. GWI’s latest research finds that adult internet users now spend an average of 6 hours and 38 minutes online each day.

• At a worldwide level, search engines remain the primary source of brand awareness, with 32.8% of GWI’s survey base saying that they discover new brands and products via online search. TV ads aren’t far behind, with 32.3% of respondents citing this channel.

• Both Similarweb and Semrush rank ChatGPT.com in the world’s 10 most visited web domains at the end of 2024.

• GWI’s data indicates that nearly three-quarters of internet users – 73% – still regularly discover new brands and products through “traditional” media like TV, print, and radio. 

• Mobiles accounted for more than 63% of web page requests in December 2024 according to Statcounter’s latest data.

Advertising

• Statista’s data indicates that global ad spend has increased by more than 50% since 2019, with digital advertising responsible for the vast majority of that increase. Digital channels now account for 72.7% of worldwide ad investment, with online spend exceeding US$790 billion in 2024.

• Statista’s data suggests that 2024 was a particularly good year for social media platforms, with global spend on social media ads increasing by 15% compared with 2023. And if we compare these social media ad spend figures with our latest data for social media user identities, the data suggests that the world’s marketers spend an average of US$46.47 per user to reach social audiences.

Social Platforms

• Half of all adult users now visit social platforms with the intention of learning more about brands, and to see the content that they publish. Instagram remains the “top” social channel for brand research, with 62.3 percent of the platform’s active adult users saying that they use the platform to research brands and products. Followed by Facebook (52.5%) and TikTok (51.5%). 

• YouTube ads now reach at least 2.53 billion users each month. That figure is up by 40 million (+1.6%) compared with this time last year, but at the time of report production, YouTube hadn’t updated these numbers since October, so the quarter-on-quarter figures appear unchanged. YouTube is likely the world’s most used social platform at the start of 2025, with reach across those 88 countries alone equal to more than 30 percent of the world’s population. And for added perspective, YouTube ads now reach close to 4 in 10 of the world’s adults each month, and more than 45 percent of the world’s internet users.

As we said, this is just a snippet of the insights you can discover, read the full report for all the insights.