Mary Meeker's 2017 internet trends report: smartphone sales and internet growth are slowing, Google and Facebook own 85% share of growth in online ads, more
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the eighth installment of a series that has tracked a decelerating curve for years: the 2016 report already showed global internet users passing 3B with adoption flat everywhere but India, and flagged slowing economic growth alongside it.
What is new in 2017 is the concentration data point — Google and Facebook taking 85% of online ad growth — which turns a slow-growth story into an ad-market structure story. The follow-on coverage confirms the pattern held: the 2018 edition found smartphone shipments stagnating as average selling prices fell, and Adobe Analytics separately measured less time spent per mobile site visit but more money per visit.
First-order effects
- Advertisers outside the Google-Facebook duopoly now bid against two platforms capturing nearly all incremental online ad spend, squeezing every other publisher's share of new budgets.
- Smartphone vendors face a maturing installed base where unit growth slows, pushing competition toward price and upgrade cycles rather than first-time buyers.
Second-order effects
- Publishers and mid-tier ad platforms must consolidate or differentiate into verticals the duopoly under-serves, since the 85% growth-share figure leaves shrinking headroom for everyone else's ad revenue.
- With device sales flattening, handset makers' economics shift toward services, higher average selling prices, and monetizing existing users — the same dynamic Adobe's data shows in mobile web behavior.
Third-order effects
- If the concentration trend holds, the structural endpoint is an online advertising market organized around two dominant platforms, with regulation and publisher alliances emerging as the counterweights.
- Internet growth becomes an emerging-market story — the 2016 report's India exception is the template — as developed markets saturate on both users and devices.
The trend: The Meeker series documents the internet's transition from a land-grab growth market to a mature one defined by duopoly ad concentration and emerging-market user growth.