NEW YORK, Sept 5 — Globally, viewers’ content-consuming habits are changing rapidly thanks to everything from faster mobile internet speeds to smartphones with bigger and bigger screens. Yet despite the wealth of digital content out there plus the growing distraction of social media, traditional television is still holding on.
But for how long? The Digital vs Traditional Media Consumption report, published today by GlobalWebIndex (GWI) shows that the average person with internet access is now spending six hours a day online and one third of that time is via a mobile device.
The GWI polls over 200,000 people in 34 markets annually in order to paint an ongoing picture of global online consumer trends, and the latest tranche of its research shows that one in every three online minutes is now devoted to social media, making it by far the most popular single online activity around the globe.
It’s worth noting that the report comes in the same week that Facebook experienced one billion active users in a single day and when social messaging service WhatsApp revealed it now has 900 million active users.
Yet despite the draw not just of social media, but of digital video content and other forms of pixelated entertainment, consumers are still finding time to watch television the old-fashioned way — i.e., in linear form.
Around the globe, consumers are still averaging 2.5 hours of traditional television a day, and it is still more popular than online TV in each of the 34 markets GWI surveys. Breaking the figures down, US consumers watch the most TV, averaging just under 3.5 hours a day, followed by the UK and France, whose inhabitants clock up almost three hours a day in front of the first screen.
However, what is clear is that the amount of time spent accessing non-linear or online shows is growing — up from 0.58 to 0.74 hours a day in mature markets such as North America and Western Europe.
When all but 16-to24-year-olds are factored out of the equation then that figure jumps to over one hour a day and when those younger adults live in China and Ireland the line has already been crossed. In those countries the youngest adult generation has already started to watch more on- than they do offline.
However, regardless of country or age group, what is clear is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to sit through a TV show without access to a second screen.
Four-fifths of adults admit to using another device while watching TV with 55 per cent of that number reaching for a smartphone, though laptops are also a popular way of enabling multi-media consumption. — Afp-Relaxnews
