Move over TV, you aren’t the king of the living room anymore.
According to the new AdReaction report from Millward Brown, Americans 16-44 years old now spend more time in front of their mobile devices than in front of their TVs. And only about 30% are “meshing” content (searching for content that is related to the TV show they are watching, the much ballyhooed “next big thing” in TV/digital integration).
“According to the findings, the smartphone has emerged as the primary screen worldwide, but the firm also found users are watching multiple screens simultaneously, a global trend that is most pronounced in China,” writes Mark Bergen in AdvertisingAge.
The bad news for digital advertisers is that only 17-18% of people respond favorably to mobile advertising, much lower than TV ads at 33%. Mobile gets the eyeballs, but not the ad engagement.
So it’s probably a good thing that TV ad spending still outpaces digital spend, although that gap is expected to shrink with digital finally overtaking TV advertising in a few years, according to a report from eMarketer.
“[TV’s] share of the total will dip to 36.4% by 2018, as digital grows at a faster rate. Digital will represent about 27.9% of the total this year but will reach 36.4% by 2018,” said Suzanne Vranica in the WSJ.
But they need to figure out how to do it right or that money is going down the drain.
“Advertisers in the U.S.,” according to Joline McGoldrick of Millward Brown, “haven’t just fallen short in spending—they’ve proven unable to produce consistent, relevant video content for phones, particularly content that exploits multiscreen use.” As a result, |video advertising| feels more like an interruption.”
Until they figure this out, advertisers better think long and hard about the kind of returns they are getting from the new First Screen. It may not be the digital nirvana they are dreaming of.
[…] findings aren’t exactly surprising; previous research has shown that consumers engage more deeply and remember longer in print. What is new is how the report talks about consumers, their brains, […]