Revealed: multi-screen users’ receptivity to advertising
Despite having the highest smartphone penetration of any other country, the UK is still in love with the television and continues to use it as the ‘primary screen’, according to the latest AdReaction report from Millward Brown.
The study, which is the first in the world to reveal the use, behaviour and receptivity to advertising of multi-screen users, shows that in the UK people spend more time daily than any other country watching TV – an average of two and a half hours a day or 36% of ‘screen time’.
The findings also reveal that TV takes centre stage in the evenings, when tablet usage also peaks (55 minutes or 13% of time daily) – with daytime screen time dominated by smartphones (111 minutes or 27% of time daily) and laptops (97 minutes or 24% of time daily).
In a statement issued on Monday, Millward brown said: “As people increasingly use more than one screen to access content, they are consuming more content in less time. A typical multi-screen user in the UK, for example, consumes just under seven hours of screen media over the course of a day in just five hours. This means they are using two screens at the same time for two hours every day.”
However, people spend 68% of their time ‘shifting’ between their screens in a “non-simultaneous way”. Millward Brown said it believes that this presents brands with opportunities to take more advantage of “synergistic multi-screen” advertising campaigns, and that brands “should exploit the gap” between time spent on mobile screens and media investment.
The study also found that people are more receptive to TV ads and less receptive to ads on their mobile devices in the UK, trailing the global average. Millward Brown believes this highlights the potential for advertisers to develop mobile advertising that utilises the functionality of mobile – such as GPS – to give consumers added value and deliver an “effective brand experience”.
The research comes less than a week after the 2014 Connected Consumer Conference, in which industry experts debated the issues around advertising in a multi-screen world.
Despite a huge shift in consumer behaviour to engage with content on mobile and tablet devices – with digital out-of-home now an additional screen to contend with – advertisers are seemingly finding themselves several steps behind a “much faster moving” audience, the debate concluded – meaning the bulk of ad spend remains in TV.
Carat’s chief strategy officer, Dan Hagen, explained that what the ad industry has been doing for a long time with television still works, despite the ubiquity of second screens competing for user attention.
“TV still works and a host of econometric studies show this. It reaches an awful lot of people,” he said. However, the job of advertisers now is to plug knowledge gaps around multi-screen behaviours, making the latest Millward Brown report a welcome resource for industry.
“Most brands don’t advertise across all media all of the time,” said Martin Ash, research director at Millward Brown.
“However this year’s AdReaction study shows that consumers with access to multiple screens at home are using and switching between their devices regularly, albeit in different ways at different times.
“AdReaction gives us a clearer understanding of how users make journeys between their devices which marketers can use to be more present, creating ad campaigns that are creative and enable deeper engagement with consumers wherever and whenever they are most receptive to advertising.”
Click here to access the full report.
