12 Bite-Size Digital Marketing Stats That Intrigued This Week

With Labor Day in the rearview mirror and the holidays on the branding-world horizon, digital marketing is getting back into full swing after a hot, long summer. Here are a dozen stats that got our attention this week: 1. Livestream sizzles Wendy's Periscope campaign on Sept. 1 promoting the Baconator sandwich reached 300,000 viewers, according to Twitter. The brand worked with Twitter-owned influencer platform Niche and digital creator Cody Johns to livestream an offline event in Chicago. LIVE on #Periscope: In Chicago with @Wendys at the Baconator Dome! #ad https://t.co/Yhp2pNQyUo — Cody Johns (@Cody) September 1, 2016 2. Bronco fans are an emoji-loving breed During the NFL's opening weekend, the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos had the most successful, emoji-enhanced hashtag on Twitter of all the league's 32 teams. Roughly 240,256 tweets mentioned the #Broncos, according to SocialFlow. The #Broncos play full speed with wild abandon. I'm okay with occasional mistakes. They are not "dirty", only human. https://t.co/QBhZSt7p3s — MileHighReport (@MileHighReport) September 10, 2016 3. Fraud fighter is killing it Integral Ad Science, which analyzes digital advertising while helping brands combat fraud, went from a $1 million company in 2010 to $100 million this year in terms of revenue. It's seen a 30 percent increase in employees across 12 countries. 4. European snaps For the first time, Snapchat broke out its European audience—it's got 50 million daily users across the pond, which amounts to one-third of its overall base. Snapchat CSO Imran Khan revealed the stat while speaking at Dmexco in Cologne, Germany. 5. Beacon cheeseburgers? Beacon-lettuce-tomato sub, anyone? Per Reveal Mobile, the leading retailers when it comes to mobile-beacon technology are McDonald's (2,300 beacons) and Subway (1,900). Look for the company to release a full study on the subject next week. (Last bacon reference in this post, we promise.) 6. VR views Working with Finnish ad-tech company Kiosked, Hong Kong Airlines created a 360-degree video view of the airline's business class cabin. Over a period of a couple of weeks, programmatic ad buys conducted by MEC led to more than 500,000 views. 7. Pittsburgh shows us the driverless future In a mere four years, per BI Intelligence, there will be 10 million self-driving cars on the road. Since we apparently better get used to the idea of robotic transportation, let's have a look at Uber's video, which shows its self-driving taxi service that launched in Pittsburgh this week. Pittsburgh, your self-driving Uber is arriving now. Check out the future of transportation. https://t.co/rVN9N2uqLJ pic.twitter.com/CHuOFl47oY — Uber (@Uber) September 14, 2016 8. Tuneful growth, indeed Spotify said it now has 40 million paying customers, up one-third from six months ago. The music platform's CEO Daniel Ek tweeted out the announcement. 40 is the new 30. Million. — Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) September 14, 2016 9. Mobile strength According to ad retargeting firm Criteo's research, 25 percent of the top mobile retailers are now getting more than half of their sales via smartphones and tablets. 10. Fat-finger shopping Google found that 92 percent of 1,000 respondents who did research on their phone made a purchase within a day, and 76 percent of those searching for something nearby visited a related business within a day. 11. Summer social Facebook said the Summer Olympics in Rio generated 1.5 billion interactions (shares, likes, "haha," "wow," "sad," et cetera... ) by 277 million people. 12. And his name is John Cena! In less than three months, a Cricket Wireless ad starring professional wrestling mega-star John Cena has garnered more than 19 million views. That's a huge branding win, which was powered by Shareability, a social-marketing company. Check out the prank-styled spot below. Bonus Stat: Easter egg: Robots "Intelligent agents," another name for robots, will eliminate 6 percent of jobs by 2021, Forrester Research said.