The Sounding Board

No TV? No problem. Stats Highlight Consumer Viewing Habits

I’m a numbers kind of gal, and so I can’t help but be drawn to new media research statistics. The latest study from NPD looks at television viewing habits, specifically on which devices people (across the word, both in developed and developing-market countries) consume their entertainment. First of all, let’s make it clear that TV sets themselves still bring home the bacon as the most-used device, accounting for 30 percent of those surveyed. However, what’s interesting is that the other 70 percent is made up of viewers who consume television on other devices – PCs, tablets, smartphones, iPods, laptops – you name it. One of our clients actually talks about this, the concept of TV Everywhere, often on their blog if you're interested – The Connected Experience.

Users in the US, UK and Germany were found to be using tablets and laptops much more often than users in market-developing countries, such as China, Russia and Turkey. There, consumers are watching television on smartphones. Why? I asked myself the same question. Turns out, the main reason is because tablets there don’t have cellular connections, and users more often have mobile plans than fixed broadband plans that would give them the capability to stream video on a tablet.  But note, that doesn’t mean tablet usage is stagnant anywhere – users are finding ways to consume television on tablets, and the rates seem to be steadily increasing, if not sharply rising.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what about the other devices that account for 70 percent of viewer statistics?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I fall into the common categories – smartphone and laptops, with TV itself being my primary go-to device. But where do you fall into the mix, and do you have any habits of when/where you choose particular devices over others?

I’d be curious to see a similar study done real-time around high-profile events, such as the summer Olympics. Being the global event that it is, it would be facilitating to see where fans are viewing the games, and how they’re supporting their hometown athletes. Would the stats in this research change at all? Will audiences alter their viewing habits, and would the popularity rankings of devices change? Especially with events scheduled around the clock, it might even be worthwhile looking at when consumers use which devices, and why.

I’ll keep an eye out for those stats, but in the meantime, go USA!

- Mary Evans

 

 

Live from the the MAM Summit: Metrics/Data

Today we're hanging out at the first ever Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit (MAMS). The brain child of the folks who bring you Capitol Communicator and Potomac Tech Wire, MAMS is bringing together more than 300 advertising, marketing, communications and media executives to discuss high-level marketing and communications issues through a series of panels, keynotes, presentations and networking. Throughout the day a few of us will be recapping some of the panel discussions and keeping you updated on all the goings on over at Twitter. You can follow MAMS on Twitter at @mamsummit or by following #mamsummit. 

The first panel I'll be taking on and recapping for you focuses on Metrics/Data. Panelists for this session include: Mike Zaneis, Senior Vice President of Interactive Advertising Bureau, Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce and Jodi McDermott, Senior Director of Product Management, comScore. 

Mike's up first and focusing on growth trends, specifically in the mobile advertising space. Internet ad revenues hit $31 billion in 2011 - a historic high! In fact, mobile advertising has experienced the fasted growth of all advertising categories with triple digit growth year over year. The big driver for mobile advertising is that we can now grow the mobile platform in a meaningful way. The power of the platform is the different opportunities that can be embedded within the ad. Watching that trailer for Hugo? Now you can also buy tickets right from the ad, visit the website and even share it across your social networks.  

Another big trend in digital advertising where Mike believes we'll see significant growth is in political advertising. Currently political advertising is capturing only 1.5 percent of all ad dollars but it is expected to grow to $10 billion during this election cycle -  greater than 40 percent growth from 2010! Part of the reason for that growth and change is because with digital there is now a platform that can be incredibly engaging to get the message out to the general public.

Following Mike on the stage is Jodi from comScore. Jodi's presentation focused on online currency, the ever important impression. Per Jodi, currency matters and for display ads, so many are losing their value and a market where currency is devalued stops growing. To solve this problem comScore came together with iab, ANA and AAAAs to create the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) campaign. The mission of 3MS is to reduce the costs of doing business resulting from the complexity of the digital advertising ecosystem.

Along with need to reduce complexity by moving to a "single tag" solution, it's necessary to improve reporting of ad exposure - improve the visibility of ads. So how to we improve ad exposure? Per Jodi what we need is to move to a viewable or valid impressions standard. Move to a currency based on audience impressions (vGRP), not  gross ad impressions. Because of the complete daisy chain of ad delivery, the reality is that 31 percent of ads are never views and many ads run in inappropriate content. If you're interested in reading more about vGRP and the charter study findings, check out www.iab.net/mmms or the white paper on comScore homepage.  

Last but not least for this panel we have Johna from BurrellesLuce. The reality of PR is that it is now a 24/7 industry - everything is fast and furious. We have so little time to grasp our our audience's attention that it's imperative that our tactical activities really align to our business goals. In fact, Johna suggests hugging your CFO and really knowing your financial drivers before doing any PR or marketing. 

As PR is rolled more and more into marketing we are finding that we need to be accountable for results. However, measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs. Johna also cautions that social is not separate. All media is social now! Additionally, as we've discovered at SpeakerBox, content creation is one of the most important thing marketers and PR practitioners are doing now. However, Johna cautions that more is not always better. It's important to take an eye and look at qualitative as well as quantitative.  

I'm sure there is so much I've missed so for more info on today's panels be sure to follow MAM Summit on Twitter - @mamsummit. 

Worth Watching: Journalism in the Age of Data

It's no secret that I love infographics, so you can only imagine how geeked out I was the other night when I stumbled upon Geoff McGhee's video documentary, "Journalism in the Age of Data," the other night thanks to the folks over at GOOD. McGhee is a former New York Times and ABCNews.com staffer, who conducted the interviews that the video is comprised of during his Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. It's a long video (54 minutes) focused on data visualization as a storytelling medium, and well worth watching, so I highly recommend carving out the time. Here's the video's synopsis:

Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with sophisticated, interactive information displays?

You'll learn how our wired world has resulted in an explosion of data, the emerging tools being used to analyze this data, and how data and its presentation are forever changing the face of journalism. And through its interviews, the documentary also introduces us to some of the thought leaders in data visualization, including former IBMers (now Googlers) Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viègas; Ben Fry from Fathom Information Design; Stanford's Jeffrey Heer; Steve Duenes, Matt Ericson and Amanda Cox of The New York Times; Nicholas Felton from Daytum.com and the famed Feltron Report; and Stamen Design founder and creative director Eric Rodenbeck.

It's a great video on a topic I think we'll all be talking more about in the months and years ahead, so take the time to watch it when you have an opportunity.

-Stephanie


Journalism in the Age of Data from geoff mcghee on Vimeo.