We idealize that picturesque Friday night family time where Mom, Dad and their 2.5 kids fire up NBC on the one television in the house and snuggle in on the couch for 30 minutes or an hour of uninterrupted entertainment.
But that was when we only had access to one form of entertainment at a time. Multi-tasking wasn’t a thing. Marketers and advertisers only had to worry about competing against other marketers and TV advertisers. There were no second screens; some people didn’t even have one screen.
Now, it’s more like Mom, Dad, their 2.5 kids and their seven electronic devices are all watching a different TV show in different rooms of the house.
In 2015, Nielsen ran a study of more than 30,000 global respondents, and 58 percent of them said they browse the internet while watching video programming. Another 47 percent of them said they engage with social media while watching video programming.
Consumers don’t know how to be entertained by only one thing at a time anymore. We’re constant consumers of content, and that’s made it harder for marketers and advertisers.
Now, we’re not just competing with other marketers and advertisers. We’re competing with things that have never historically been competition, like video games, social media, news, text messages or Snapchats.
Sometimes, we’re even competing against ourselves — with other types of our own content on our other media channels. We’re not competing for media placement anymore — we’re competing for attention. And frankly, that’s an even scarier competition.
Comments