Ben Shepherd writes: I love talk around media consumption.
The digital army scream that there should be equilibrium between the % of hours of digital is consumed and the % of dollars digital receives. The logic is shaky at best but it’s a good demonstration of some of the digital worlds sense of revenue entitlement. “These people are online”. Sure, they are … but there’s also “offline” too.
So here’s a piece from the latest Nielsen Internet and Technology Report. It’s the media consumption per hour per week per medium of respondants 16+
Ok – so according to this Internet is the number 1 medium. 16.6 hours spent per week. Roy Morgan is disputing this but let’s remember … both methodologies are very different.
Here’s where it gets sort of interesting (well, interesting if you are interested in this sort of stuff) …
Sure, Internet has grown almost 3 fold since 2003 – that shouldn’t be news to anyone. It was coming off a low base too. I’m not trivialising the accomplishment … moreso asking we look at it in a little more perspective.
TV consumption has risen since 2003! And people say the medium is dead … however users are spending more time watching the box now than they were in 2003. Is this the sign of a dead medium?
DVD and Video consumption is up. Magazines up.
Video games – up. Radio – down. Newspapers down. But none of these 2 are particularly down – not enough to suggest any of them are dying in my opinion.
All this suggests to me is that people are consuming MORE media … and the real insight is they’re consuming multiple forms of media at the same time.
Surely this suggests that the absolute critical challenge to the digital industry is to better understand the wider communications mix … as consumers aren’t consuming digital channels in a vacuum anymore.
I saw some data the other day that suggested that the only medium that truly punches above its weight when you consider consumption by hour compared with spend is newspapers. TV is about equal and radio punches below its weight.
It’s handy to look at consumption by daypart as well. Radio – dominant in the morning drive. TV – dominant in the evening. 2 critical time periods for advertisers. Internet – strongest during daytime. This analysis doesn’t tell a great story for newspapers but the data is broad and takes into account engagement and hours spent not volume.
talking digital - Ben Shepherd 
Bang on the money. This will be the difference between the agency/publisher/vendor for the the future and those left still whining about being given a percentage of the marketing budget because that clears up their revenue target for the year.
As convergence in platforms has real consumer appeal (because it really works) those who have spent their time wisely now understanding how to seamlessly link their digital messaging with their offline due to people engaging in more than one media at a time, will be best placed to advise. And thats a short window
Small correction, but unless I’m reading it wrong, video game consumption is up over the period.
Great post. Finally there is data to validate obvious user patterns. However the market (agency & publishers) are still behind.
Digital is still not integrated into the broader buying & selling process, with most of the major publishers supporting seperate online sales untis; that almost compete with their print or TV counterparts for ad dollars – making cross media selling a challenge.
Only media out there that seems to be doing a decent job of cross media is radio & online (think Ben you mentioned some work from Nova in another post?). It might be because they were the last ones to catch onto online and learnt from the mistakes of others…
Same challenge on the agency side, with traditional planner/buyers not 100% comfortable with cross media (unless its promotionally relevant!!) as the knowledge is not filtering through from their online guys into the broader teams.
true jamie, my mistake – cheers
Certainly a busy time for me since I started my podcast recording business 8 months ago.
Audio podcasting can create an effective and innovative newsletter for client communication that’s heard rather than read.
If there’s a conference or meeting presentation that you want all your staff or clients to hear, distributing it as a sound file can be dramatic and effective.
The key is to record and post produce a podcast to a broadcast quality standard using state of the art digital recording equipment.
Podcasting can send a clear message that an organisation is progressive, it seeks new ways to inform, engage and value add its services to a wider audience.