According to a recent analysis of numerous research studies on major media consumption, the average time spent with all major media combined increased from about 10.6 hours in 2008 to 11 hours in 2010. TV and video (not including online video) captured the lion’s share of all media time. However, the rate was fairly stable—between 40% and 41% for the three years. Of course, the internet’s share of media time was up over the same period, from 21.5% to 23.5%, as did mobile, from 5% to 7.5%. In fact, time spent with mobile devices is rising faster than all other media. In 2010, consumers spent 28.2% more time with mobile devices (which covers all mobile activities on all mobile devices). That gain was even higher than the 21.9% growth in 2009, according to the eMarketer report.
Time spent on the internet showed moderate but steady gains, at more than 6% each year since 2008.
The share of time spent with magazines and newspapers fluctuated between 10% and 7.5%, while radio and all other media—video games, movies in theaters and outdoor media—declined. The biggest brunt–magazines and newspapers–lost 9.1% each, but the loss wasn’t as big as in 2009 where they saw declines of 12% and 13.2% respectively. Radio’s share of time spent was down 2% in 2010 and 3.9% in 2009.
Radio’s usage percent (now the #3 medium) dropped from 16% in 2008 to 14.5% in 2010, but the report notes that time spent listening to the radio does not include streaming stations from the internet. So if they could break out streaming audio of radio stations, the number would certainly be better.
To account for multitasking, an hour spent watching TV and surfing the internet was counted as one hour for TV plus one hour for internet use, so this is likely a huge portion of where the time spent went up for all media combined.
In 2010, consumers spent an average of 4 hours and 24 minutes each day watching TV and video, while being online for 2 hours and 35 minutes. Mobile devices received an average of 50 minutes’ worth of attention every day—the same amount of time allotted to newspapers and magazines combined. eMarketer expects that time spent with mobile devices will continue to increase, most likely taking time away from print media.
RBR-TVBR observation: While agencies and advertisers will be projecting budgets more and more toward mobile and internet content, radio and television can always capitalize on the fact that they deliver content in both of these rapidly-growing mediums. The more the pitch includes online and mobile, the more these trends will be offset—regardless if research includes streaming delivery of traditional media or not.
