The other week someone asked me what an agency such as Rabbit (where I work) should be focusing on going forward.

My reply, was previously organisations have been talking about a digital first approach.   In other words, concentrate on online channels and content 1st, which then filters into the offline world.   However now the priority has to be mobile first,  you cater in the 1st instance for people who may be consuming your content via their smartphones.

Sounds obvious enough, but some recent stats demonstrate the need to move from theory to practice:

• In February 2012, smartphone penetration in the five main European Union states was 48.9% – 54.7% in the UK .  Similarly, in the US, over half of all mobile phones will be smartphones in 2013 are now smartphones, according to Nielsen stats.

• Most in the UK had used an app (52%) a mobile browser (52.6%), and though the mobile games space is growing with 37% having played a game, 39% had accessed social networks via their mobile

• Depending on who you believe, mobile Internet will overtake fixed PC Internet use in either 2014 or 2015. (infographic from Microsoft above)

• In April for the first time in 40 months, social network apps overtook games.  Analytics company Flurry says mobile users spent 24 minutes each a day on games and social networks, with social networks slightly ahead.    Overall users Flurry tracked spent 77 minutes a day with mobile apps – so over an hour a day

• A related study published in the Telegraph, found that smartphone owners make *fewer* telephone calls, spending five hours a week surfing the Internet on their devices

• The UK study by Recombu.com found that smartphone owners spend more time sending emails, on social media and shopping online…and less time reading books, exercising or watching TV

• That latter stat ties into an Ofcom one I use quite a lot about the most essential form of media among UK consumers.   Among 18-24 year olds, the TV is now the 3rd most essential media (after mobiles and PC+Internet) and another piece of research this week said that 41% of 18-24 year olds (1/5 of all adults) had abandoned live TV

• In fact, a lot of that reading now happens on Tablets.  “Tablet is the new PC” says a Forbes blog post – Gartner is predicting a 98% increase in tablet sales in 2012 to 118 million units

• In March 2012, mobile devices accounted for 10% of traffic to online retail sites.  Separately, a study by SEO Agency Spy said that 54% of UK consumers had made a purchase via their mobiles, while only a minority (35%) would never consider it

• A study involving 34,000 people worldwide by browser Opera found that in some countries almost half of new Internet users are mobile only.   Bear in mind that Opera pulls its data from its own users, and that Opera’s main focus is now mobile devices, but this is still significant

• Though high-end digital camera sales are expected to remain strong, the bottom end of the market will suffer as more and more people use their smartphone as their main camera – digital camera shipments are expected to decline 4.3% in 2012

So what’s the conclusion?   In two, at the latest three years, mobile devices will be the main way of connecting to the Internet.   Younger consumers are already doing so, and various activities ranging from social media to online shopping are increasing on smartphones.

Smartphones are becoming the primary camera for more and more people coinciding with Instagram reaching 50 million users, while smartphone users are not only always connected but engage in content snacking as this US report says 

In other words, what they consume may not be different, but how they consume it, how long for, how they share it and how they view it will be.  That’s something we need to be ready for now.

Related articles

• Comscore’s 2012 Mobile Future in Focus Report – ten take outs (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• New Stats to Get You Moving on Mobile (deluxesmallbizblog.com)
• Mobile Internet will soon surpass PC internet usage! (trak.in)
• Opera claims 56% of users are mobile-only Web surfers (slashgear.com)

According to a marketing magazine report, Diageo’s white spirits marketing director Philip Gladman thinks that if you are not going to get a million Facebook fans you should take your budget and “stick it in TV.”

It’s a reminder for those of us who work in the digital / social space that we’re sometimes still fighting the battles of 3-4 years ago.  And though he’s since slightly qualified his remark in a response (posted via the journalist who wrote the original piece, Gemma Charles), the fact remains that this sort of thing does still have some currency.

As a result, its worth replying to the sentiment if not the individual, with five points showing that a strategy solely revolving around the Television may not be the best use of money:

1 – Scheduled, live TV has relatively low attention levels compared to other types of media.   By comparison, computer activity commands high attention, with surfing the Internet on mobiles and social networking being somewhere in between.

In fact, only listening to music on a music centre or listening to the radio has a lower attention rate than standard, scheduled Television

2 – Indeed, in the UK over a third (36%) of us no longer watch live TV.    Out of those, 42% use a PVR like Sky+ or Virgin Media/Tivo.   I wouldn’t think too many of them waste the opportunity to fast forward through the ads

3 – When asked last year, what their most essential form of media is, all UK adults still put TV top.  But compared to 2009, TV was chosen by less than half.    And the picture was even more pronounced for younger consumers.  For the first time, adults aged 16-24 put using a mobile phone (28%) and using the internet (26%) ahead of watching television (23%)

4 – When they are watching TV, the chances are they are on the Internet at the same time.   The whole ‘second screen’ and ‘social TV’ concept is fairly well known, and in the UK, 74% of consumers with a broadband connection surf the Internet while the TV is on

5 – Though the rate of decline is nowhere near that of newspapers – and won’t be – the TV audience is slowly getting smaller and older.   A US study showed that from 2006-2001, CBS’s average viewer age rose from 53 to 56.   ABC’s went up from 47.4 to 52.3, NBC’s from 48.5 to 50.1, while Fox’s went from 41.5 to a still relatively sprightly 45.4

Of course the real answer is that it should never be either / or.   Almost no one who works in digital marketing is so blinkered as to imagine that digital should live in a silo.

TV does still command tens of millions of eye-balls.   But those eye-balls are getting older, the way they watch TV is changing, and very often they are doing something else.   Cue the perfect opportunity for social and TV to work together.

Image – Bamcat

Related articles

• Over 30 Per Cent No Longer Watch Live TV (itproportal.com)
• Why Internet TV could be hugely popular and change marketing forever (epiphanysolutions.co.uk)
• How social media users multitask while watching TV (lostremote.com)

A piece of research from the Brookings Institution (thanks @kenyanpundit for the link) finds that, at least in politics, when it comes to gee-ing up supporters, online video works best.  However, if you are going to trash someone, stick with TV.

Though all eyes are currently on the US Presidential election, the Brookings Institution carried out its study in 12 countries worldwide.

The Brookings Institution found that anyone likely to watch a political video on YouTube was younger, richer, more educated, more likely to be interested in politics – and more partisan.   In other words, you don’t trawl the world’s largest online video site to help inform your point of view.  You look through it to find political content that already confirms it.

The other factor, is that you can run political ads on YouTube for free, meaning lengthy missives to supporters that would cost you a fair amount of money on TV have a home there.

TV is different.  You are more likely to find wavering voters, and ones less interested in politics on telly.  And it costs money, so you need to make it count.  As a result, though 22% of YouTube ads involved a character attack on an opponent, for TV that figure jumped to 38%

The Internet – an organisational tool

Both in the US and UK there has been a certain amount of “see, I told you so!” type reactions to findings that TV not the Internet informs public opinion when it comes to politics  

In fact, the Brookings Institution findings point to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Internet is good for in political campaigns:

“The internet is not mainly a tool for politicians to communicate directly with voters, even though voters are free to peruse campaign websites if they wish. Instead..the internet serves as a tool for campaigns to inform other members of the broad political elite, including journalists, commentators, activists, and opinion leaders.”

More to the point, it serves as a place where you can recruit volunteers, raise cash, and disseminate campaign material.   Your campaign website or Twitter account will by and large not change minds.  The TV debates still serve that purpose.

Men more engaged with online video

At the same time, a separate Comscore study in the UK shows that unlike the social media arena as a whole, online video is an area dominated by men.  Men are far more engaged with both content videos, as well as ad videos.

Top image – boutmuet

Related articles

• Report: YouTube Campaign Videos More Positive than TV Ads (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
• How Political Campaigns Should Be Using Video In 2012 (adage.com)

Over the past few years, two related concepts have gathered more and more attention.  First of all, there is the idea of media stacking – consuming two different types of media at once, usually interpreted to mean having the laptop open in front of the TV.

Secondly, and related to that there is the notion of social TV – people talking live and online about what’s on the television.

In fact, a Nielsen study shows it’s tablet owners in particular who have their devices open while the box is blaring away in the background.   42% of tablet owners, most of which are still iPad owners , use their device in front of the TV every day.

For smartphone owners the % is 40%, whereas owners of ereaders such as the Kindle are the least distracted, with only 14% reading the ereader and simultaneously watching TV every day.

And what are tablet users doing?   60% are reading their emails while a programme is on.   However, 42% of men and 48% of women are on social networks. Significantly, one in five even looked up information related to an ad.

Who says social media spells the death of TV advertising?  As that last stat (and plenty of case studies) shows, well crafted ads with social elements can even go a lot further thanks to social channels.

Related articles

• 40 percent of people use their tablets and smartphones while watching TV (intomobile.com)
• What TV viewers are doing on their tablets, smartphones (lostremote.com)
• Tablets, smartphones distracting TV watchers (survey) (zdnet.com)

Those of us who work in the online / social sphere are forever asked about KPIs.   No matter the numbers on social media, there is still a constant need for proof points to show that dollars, pounds and euros spent in social media actually works.

Here’s one – via Nielsen and McKinsey.  There is a direct correlation between an increase in social buzz and TV ratings.

The chart is fairly self explanatory, an increase in buzz at certain periods of a TV series in turn equates to a 1% ratings increase.

As this is a US study, that can translate into millions of viewers (even here in the UK, an uplift of 1% would be substantial).   Millions of viewers who are then also exposed to the advertising sold within that show.

Perhaps not surprisingly, 18-34 year olds are most engaged and responsible for bringing in new viewers.   Nielsen tells us that men aged 50+ are least interested about what is being said online.

That’s an interesting point, and ties into an earlier Comscore study in Europe showing that while women in their 40s and 50s are highly engaged in social networks, 50+ men are increasingly being left behind.

Finally, think this finding is exclusive to TV and entertainment?    In the US, Jeep found that not only could social media drive sales.  It could predict them.  

Related articles

• The Relationship Between Social Media Buzz and TV Ratings | Nielsen (shanecrombie.com)
• Engaged Social Media Users Spend Up to 40 Percent More [Data] (hubspot.com)
• Social data: A better way to track TV (radar.oreilly.com)
• How social networking is reviving communal TV viewing (thenextweb.com)

When referring to the shift from ‘old’ to ‘new’ media one piece of research I talk about again and again is a question Ofcom (the UK equivalent to the FCC) regularly asks consumers – what one piece of media can you not live without?   I use it, as it is a stat that gets to the bottom of which media really matters to the consumer

Previous results showed that TV is still far in front with the Internet a  distant second and newspapers nowhere to be seen.   But for 18-25 year olds things were somewhat different.   Mobile phones and not PCs+Internet were in second place.   TV was in front, but not by much.

The latest results have changed and an important milestone has been crossed:

TV remains the most-missed media for UK adults as a whole, although this has decreased from 50% in 2009 to 44% in 2010.   But for the first time, adults aged 16-24 mention using a mobile phone (28%) and using the internet (26%) ahead of watching television (23%).     Result – TV only campaigns are increasingly leaving consumers behind, and if you haven’t got a mobile element you are missing a lot of young adults completely.

Trust in social media increases
Another key stat: Trust in information relayed via social media and online media as a whole has increased.

34% trust what they read in newspapers, while 59% trust what they read on news websites.  Related to that, as another study showed, online articles command more attention than their print equivalents.

However at the same time, more consumers now trust rather than distrust what they see on social networks – 36% vs 33%.   That trust is most likely to be highest among women, 16-35 year olds and ‘AB’ higher earners.

Related articles

• Youths inseparably hooked to mobile phones (news.bioscholar.com)
• Young people ‘would rather live without TV than mobiles or net’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Global Mobile Broadband Market To Be Worth US$ 233 Billion By 2015 But ARPU Will Decline (telecomjunction.wordpress.com)

That last post concerned the decline of the global magazine industry.

In fact according to eMarketer (via Techcrunch), every day Americans now spend more than 2x as long on their mobiles (50 mins) as they do reading magazines (20 mins).   Indeed, as much time is spent using mobile devices as reading newspapers (30 mins) and magazines (20 mins) combined.

Related articles

• US spending as much time on phone as all paper news combined (electronista.com)
• eMarketer: TV Tops Internet in the Average Adults’ Preferences (pamil-visions.net)

The other week I talked about Nielsen figures showing that in the US at least, the older you are the more TV you watch.   However, that doesn’t mean that the television is being abandoned completely.

A study from Frank Magid Associates shows that only 1% of digital TV subscribers in the US have cancelled their subscriptions because they get everything that they want online (via MediaPost). In fact, only 2.5% of US media consumers use the Internet exclusively for video content.

Indeed, people who watch video via the Web seem to be entertainment junkies who indulge through a variety of different platforms.  Frank Magid associates says that “consumers using the greatest number of alternative platforms also tend to spend the most money on traditional subscription services.”

As a result, online video consumers are not so-called cord cutters.   Instead they see the Web as one element of their overall TV experience.

Earlier this year the UK regulatory authority Ofcom found that the most popular YouTube channels were variations of mainstream media properties.   And then there is the much talked about return of appointment or social TV where laptops or iPhones are used side by side with the television set to share the experience with a wider online audience of friends.

Image – From dhammza

Related articles

• Magid Study: Few Consider Cutting the Cord (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)
• comScore to Track “Three-Screen” Video Usage, CEO Magid Abraham (beet.tv)
• US cable TV bleeds subscribers as online grows (showbizandstyle.inquirer.net)
• Web TV viewers are ‘cord keepers’ and not cutters (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)

Despite the whole ‘newspaper death watch’ trend, current research shows that the TV is still the main media device for most consumers.   At the same time, there are signs that do show some viewers, especially younger ones, switching off their boxes.

For example, the other day GigaOm reported on a Nielsen study done in TV-land: The United States.   Nielsen shows that US TV viewers watched less in Q2 2010 compared to the previous quarter, but that’s a stat that can be explained away by seasonal factors.   What’s more interesting is when you look at TV time by age group.

Certainly in the pre Internet 1980s, teens were the prime TV audience.   Now at 103:46 hours:minutes a month, 12-17 year olds watch less TV than any other age group.   Similarly, 18-24 year olds (113:54) tune in for a significantly shorter period of time than other adults.   In fact, Nielsen’s stats show that the older you are, the more TV you watch with people who are 65+ watching almost 200 hours.

GigaOm comments, “it’s not a good sign for TV programmers and cable companies, which are gradually seeing their viewers getting older.”

Some additional stats from both the UK and US that support this trend:

1 – The UK’s Ofcom Communications Markets Report asks consumers about their most essential media.   Looking at which one piece of media they would miss the most, 50% of all UK consumers chose TV.   However, for the under 25s that dropped to 36%.

2 - Similarly, according to Pew Research, 53% of US adults aged 65+ consider their TV set an essential item, compared to 29% of 18-29 year olds.

A lot of that time spent away from the TV set is of course spent online.   But there is also some evidence to show that social networks could be slowly bringing people back to the television set.

Last week Fastcompany had a piece on Twitter bringing back “appointment TV” – live events that you want to share with your friends via social media (with your laptop or phone open beside you).   And Motorola’s research out this week says that 42% of TV viewers have exchanged e-mails, had IM chats or used social media to talk about a TV programme at the same time they were viewing it, while 22% said that social media + TV “multitasking” was a regular feature of their television experience.

Related articles

• Nielsen: Viewers Watched Less TV Per Month In Q2 (nytimes.com)
• Nielsen: Viewers Watched Less TV Per Month In Q2 (gigaom.com)
• Web TV viewers are ‘cord keepers’ and not cutters (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)

Does watching online content make you less likely to watch ordinary TV?   Not at all, says metrics group Nielsen (via Hollywood Reporter) and the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), which say that Web TV viewers are if anything “cord keepers” rather than cutters.

Nielsen surveyed a group of Americans that watch at least some TV or movies via the Internet on their TV sets.    The research showed that 84% were watching as much, if not more, scheduled TV.   And discovering a programme on the Web can then often result in you watching it via the normal means on scheduled TV – this was the case for 53% of respondents.

CTAM says that these results show how the Internet is often used to enhance someone’s enjoyment of a particular show, and not replace it with something else.   It also links into stats that show that the most popular YouTube channels are more often than not variations of what you will see on TV anyway.   According to Ofcom, in the UK that includes BBC Worldwide, X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – all mainstream broadcast properties.

Related articles

• Are Web TV Viewers Cord Cutters — or Keepers? (adweek.com)