A report from eMarketer found that Americans are becoming multitaskers in terms of the media they interact with on a daily basis. Increasingly, internet users are also watching television and using their smartphones or tablets while using other media, which means internet marketers have ample opportunities to reach their online audiences with integrated marketing campaigns.
The most frequent media consumption combination is watching television while using a mobile computing device, such as a smartphone, laptop or tablet computer. Beyond that, many respondents said they keep their television on while reading a newspaper, magazine or book. When combining content consumption across different devices, eMarketer estimates that consumers spend 11 hours per day on reading or viewing content.
For marketers, this increases the value of integrated new media marketing campaigns, since the average time spent on the web has reached about 2 hours and 47 minutes per day for each user (not counting the daily hour spent with mobile media, which may overlap with time online). Additionally, the average person still watches more than 4 hours of television or videos every day, and the survey didn’t distinguish between watching videos online or on TVs.
EMarketer spoke with other industry experts in its report and found that much of this media multitasking is complementary. For example, users will research a topic they see on television on the web with whichever device they have at hand.
“When people sit down to watch a TV show, and they have their iPad with them, they’re not necessarily multitasking in contradictory ways,” Edward Boches, creative director at ad agency Mullin, told eMarketer. “I may be watching something … and I’ll just quickly Google something [to augment the experience].”
Integrated marketing efforts can help brands reach consumers on their content platforms of choice, and monitoring audience behaviors can inform web campaigns. As marketers identify engagement patterns, from the times of day consumers are finding a website through search or increased activity around relevant keywords updating strategies for maximum return is becoming more common. Brafton recently reported that branding campaigns on the web are typically adjusted 11 times as new prospect data becomes available.
