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Multitasking the Media

New findings from BIGresearch - its Simultaneous Media Usage Study - suggest that marketers are facing what the company calls a 'new reality'. Ian Delaney checks through the figures.

New findings from BIGresearch - its Simultaneous Media Usage Study - suggest that marketers are facing what the company calls a 'new reality'. Ian Delaney checks through the figures.

Joe Pilotta, VP, Research said that, "The intermittent usage of media which occurs during simultaneous consumption creates a serious problem for marketers who rely on exposure to media models since the anticipated exposure is being shared with many other media options and may never occur."

As the title of the research suggests, it's apparent that few of us just do one thing at a time any more. And this is especially true when it comes to online activity:

These findings seem to confound notions of viewers or audiences so precious to media owners. In the majority of cases, it seems, at least part of the time, the audience isn't paying attention. Of course, the results do not show the extent to which this happens. I would imagine that this varies enormously according to the ease with which this can be done. It's quite hard to absorb other media while you're reading a newspaper - you have to pay attention to make any sense of it whatsoever. Browsing the web, on the other hand, quite naturally lends itself to doing other things at the same time - looking at other web pages, the television out of the corner of your eye, and taking part in a conversation is far from impossible.

The research suggests that there's a considerable gap between where marketers are spending their money and the media that actually influences consumers. While word-of-mouth was found to be the most influential source of information for both car and electronics purchases, there's not even any official data on the marketing spend made by companies. In both sectors, between a third and a half of the total media spend went on television, while only a quarter to a third of consumers said that media had influenced their decisions.

Pilotta from BIGresearch notes that "...new media options such as online search, blogging, email, texting, video, streaming and social networks such as MySpace and Youtube have expanded the Word of Mouth universe and made traditional advertising less relevant for many."