Online time now exceeds offline media consumption globally

Consumers are now spending more time with online media than they are with traditional forms of media according to a new report from GlobalWebIndex.

Globally, digital usage now accounts for 57% of daily media time with consumers spending an average of 10.7 hours a day with all forms of media – with 5.6 hours of that on digital.

The trend to online is most marked in countries such as UAE and China, where total online time, which includes PC, tablet and mobile takes up 7.3 and 6.1 hours respectively.

Offline media such as TV, radio and newspapers still account for the majority of media time in mature internet markets such as the UK and US, but overall more media time is spent online than offline in 23 out of the 31 major markets tracked by GlobalWebIndex.

Digital 2013 – A Global Analysis of How Consumers Spend Their Media Time is based on more than 32,000 internet users from 31 countries, with surveys answered in the final quarter of 2012.

TV remains the strongest traditional media taking an average of 2.49 hours a day across all markets, peaking at 3.59 hours in the US. Alternative digital forms of TV still have a way to catch up with China leading growth at 1.14 hours a day.

The report also identifies that news is now the content format that consumers are most likely to source online, particularly in emerging markets such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil.

Overall physical print and online news are at parity but physical print still attracts more time than online news in Turkey, Malaysia and China. Globally consumers are spending an average of 0.63 hours with both traditional print and online news.

“This data shows why it is so critical to build a holistic communications strategy,” said Tom Smith, founder of GlobalWebIndex. “Consumers worldwide have increasingly digitalised their media consumption and online now dominates the way they spend their day. This is a clear argument for online media to get a greater share of advertising spend, regardless of where you are in the world.”