Forester Research Study on Time Spent by Average Consumer by Medium

Some interesting stats from Forester Research, detailing the amount of time spent by the average consumer by medium. Predictably, the survey shows time spent on newspapers and magazines way down. 

Full story here.

Forrester: Time Spent on Internet Is Equal to TV

Research already showed younger demos spending more time on the Web than watching TV

Dec 13, 2010

– Brian Morrissey

There’s one graph every digital business uses: It shows the huge
gap between the percentage of consumer time spent on the Internet
and that of marketer budgets spent on online ads. Forrester
Research is giving them new ammunition.

A new consumer survey from the researcher found that for the first
year, the amount of time U.S. households spent watching TV and
using the Internet is equal at 13 hours per week. This comes on the
heels of research showing that younger consumers (18-30) already
spent more time on the Web than watching TV. Now, people 31-44 are
also spending more time online than with TV.

The figures are at the heart of a running debate about ad-budget
allocation. One side is the proposition that marketer priorities
are seriously out of whack, because their budgets don’t match up to
consumer behavior.
Venture capitalist Mary Meeker calls this a "$50 billion
opportunity." Another school of thought is that TV remains by
far more important to brand building than the typical
Internet options of display ads and search links.

Forrester takes pains to note it’s not predicting the demise of TV.
In fact, the amount of time spent watching TV has remained stable
over the past five years. During that same time, however, time
spent on the Web has risen 121 percent. The biggest losers in
comparison to the Web are: radio (down 15 percent), newspapers
(down 26 percent) and magazines (down 18 percent).

One important note: While the time spent figures are equal, over a
third of the hours on the Web are for work purposes, while TV is
nearly exclusively a leisure activity.

Unsurprisingly, Forrester found e-commerce and social media the
major drivers of growth over the last three years. E-commerce use
rose from 37 percent to 60 percent, while social media went from 15
percent to 35 percent.