1. Lotte Oostrom, Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
Measuring the internet economy in The Netherlands: a big data analyses
Lotte Oostrom, Statistics Netherlands (CBS)

2. Aim of the study Main research question:
“What is the importance of the internet economy to the Dutch economy?”
The aim of the research project was fourfold:
Determine a pragmatic definition of “the internet economy”
Show the importance and size of the internet economy in NL
Show the possibilities of new measurement methods with big data
Explain differences from regular statistics/concepts

3. Dataprovider dataset: 2,5 million Dutch websites
Country, address, company name, Chamber of Commerce number, taks number, phone number, , …..
Business information
eCommerce probability, shopping cart software, delivery services, payment methods, products, prices,…
eCommerce
Title, description, keywords, category, language, author….
Content
Marketing, social media, links, technical and hosting information, …
Other

4. Definition of the internet economy
Businesses without a website
Businesses with a website that do not belong to category C, D or E
Online stores according to eCommerce variables
Online services or internet related ICT according to keyword analysis

5. Merging to the GBR

6. Merging to the GBR: results

7. Number of business by internet category, 2015
975,000
438,000
68,000
28,500
5,700
16,000

8. Relative distribution of number of companies, jobs, turnover and value added by Internet categories, 2015
The core of the internet economy (online stores, online services and internet related ICT) consists of 50,000 businesses and provides 345,000 jobs (4.4% of the total) and a turnover of € 104 billion (7.7% of the total).

9. The core of the internet economy compared to other sectors
In terms of size, the core of the internet economy is roughly comparable to industries like ‘construction’ or ‘accommodation and food service activities’ or ‘transportation and storage’.

10. Regional distribution
Certain regions are more prominent in the internet economy than others.
Online stores
Online services
Internet related ICT

11. Relative size of businesses
More than 80 per cent of the businesses without a website and three quarters of the online stores have only 1 employee.

12. Relative age of businesses
The businesses without a website, online stores and online services are relatively ‘young’ compared to the other categories.

13. Heatmap businesses with website

14. Future plans
Improve method by using machine learning/Artificial Intelligence and additional datasources.
Obtain time series for several years
Repeat the study in other countries -> Germany & UK (Dataprovider already has data on more than 40 countries!)
Turn into regular statistics?
For more information:
Discussion paper