navigating the multi-screen universe
TRANSCRIPT
by Dr. Sean Carton
Navigating the Multi-Screen Universe
August 2015
When it comes to advertising, most of us have been brought up to think of “media” as two separate realms.
TraditionalDigital
VS(TV, print, outdoor and radio)
(Display, search, in-app, microsites)
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We tend to think that each medium and each format within that medium exists on its own.
Television separate from radioSearch separate from online display
Mobile web ads separate from mobile video ads
Unfortunately in today’s media universe, thinking in terms of these divisions is dead wrong. The world’s moved on. We’re in a whole new media universe.
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The Rise and the Fall
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of Convergence
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As web usage in the early 1990s spread people began to use it as a way to publish their own content…
Overtime people began putting video, music, games and other digital content online…making it not a medium but a metamedium (a medium of media).
They called it… Convergence
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New types of screens started to pop up, screens that allowed us to access content over the Internet in a way that didn’t feel like using a computer and didn't feel like television. Screens that were a lot smaller, more portable, and personal.
Then something changed…
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Now we call it…Divergence?
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Instead of one screen convergence we got multiple screens that allowed us to multitask our content consumption in a very personal way. The advent of the smartphone and tablet marked the beginning of the multi-screen universe we find ourselves in today.
Then, everything started to look totally different.
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First, young people started watching less and less TV.
In 2011, 18-24 year olds watched an average of 26 hours of TV per week
By Q1 of 2015, that number had dropped to 18 hours.
Neilson Report
According research published by MillwardBrown, consumers are spending:
151 minutes per day on their smartphone.
147 minutes per day watching TV.103 minutes per day on their laptops.
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And where is that time going?
But the real question isn’t what are we doing instead of watching TV, but what are we doing while watching TV?
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In a study done by YuMe the test group spent just 53% of the time singularly watching TV when other devices were available…after only 4 minutes, they spent 19% of the time watching TV.
So why does our attention wander so quickly?
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According to the MillwardBrown study…
43% just wanted to “fill time”
26% were “busy and just needed to get things done”
36% weren’t ever really watching TV at all…it was “just background noise.”
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21% were “bored with TV.”
38% were keeping up with their friends on social media
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Not good right?
Simply put, if these numbers are generalized to the entire TV watching population (or, in the very least, the 64% who own smartphones, it means that a big chunk of the TV audience aren’t watching TV at all. The TV’s on, but nobody’s home.
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As unfortunate as this may be, this is still our audience, and we need to target them.
So let’s get busy.
Microsoft found that simultaneous screen use could be classified into four categories:
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Content Grazing
Social Spider Webbing Quantum usage
Investigative Spider Wedding
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Content Grazing (68% of respondents) Engaging in behavior to distract themselves.
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Social Spider Webbing (39% of respondents) Connecting and sharing with others while doing something else.
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Investigative Spider Wedding (57% of respondents) Simultaneous usage for gathering information on a topic or discovering new things (e.g. Researching actors on IMDB.com while watching a movie.
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Quantum usage (46% of respondents) Sequential, content based browsing. Moving from one link to another.
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Additionally…we can look at channels to determine how our audiences are acting. For example, a study by ShareThis (reported on ClickZ.com) found that Twitter usage peaks during events while Reddit peaked after events.
This tells us that people were using Twitter while watching TV, and then used Reddit afterwards.
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Reaching these fragmented audiences requires advertisers to understand what device the target audience is using and what they’re using it for. It requires us to locate them.
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In the physical world we look at four dimensions to demine location.
Width (X) Height (Y) Depth (Z) Time (T)
Navigating the multi-screen universe requires knowing four dimensions as well:
Audience (who) Intention (why) Context (where or when) Device (what)
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1.Age2.Sex3.Ethnicity4.Income5.Etc.
Audience:
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Why someone is using a particular device. Are they research? Are they browsing? How much information do they need?
Intention
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How the persons environment is effective them…are they on their lunch break? Are they with their family? Are they in a rush?
Context
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Smartphones are popular for frequent usage over the course of a day as a connector, boredom-killer, on-the-spot advisor, and navigator.
Device
Laptop and desktop computers function as tools of creation, portals to information, crunchers of numbers, and organizers of all the information we collect throughout our lives.
Tablets are somewhere in-between, performing many of the functions reserved for laptops and desktops but in a personal way more akin to a smartphone.
So let’s take a test…
Say we want to reach prospective undergraduate students of a college. They have an idea of what type of school they want and are trying to narrow their list down to their top five schools. They have to start applying in a month.
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Audience: prospective students between 16-18 who are interested in attending college. Intention: they want to pick a college that’s right for them.
Context: in their home (or primary domicile) focused on searching
Device: laptop or desktop, either in their bedroom or in a public area in the home.
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Given these four dimensions, how can we reach our audience?
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In advertising we’re constantly trying to navigate an ever-changing media landscape to find our audience. While the massive cultural shifts of the past few years make the landscape of the future less predictable, if we understand the dimensions we need to navigate we can begin mapping out the territory.
Read the full Whitepaper at:
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http://idfive.com/navigating-the-multi-screen-universe/
