Trawling the past to define our media future

A selfie in 2006

As Mediatel prepares to host The Year Ahead 2017, Belinda Beeftink looks at how media consumption has changed over the last decade – and predicts what the next year will have in store

As the year begins we typically look to the future and try and forecast what may be in store for us over the next twelve months. However, if 2016 is anything to go by, we shouldn’t try and predict anything because we might be proved wrong.

We work in an industry where we are attuned to pick up the new and the shiny and to quickly forget the old and established. However, as we learn to our cost, the new and shiny is not always fit for purpose and will not always stay the course. So, the trick is to pick up on the trends, developments and changes that are truly meaningful and will have impact on our business and our future.

Confucious put it well when he said “Study the past if you would define the future” and I think I would have to agree with him.

So much of what we do in the media industry relates to an understanding of people – typically an audience or a consumer, what motivates them, what they think, how they feel and most of all what they do.

The IPA’s TouchPoints Daily Life survey provides us with 10 years’ worth of consumer back data providing a picture of changing life. We would do well to study the picture whilst we ponder the future.

For example, the time we spend at work has risen by 22% since 2005, which has the effect of squeezing our leisure time and reducing the amount of time we have available to do other things. We have less time to relax – nearly an hour a day (59 minutes less) and we also make less time to socialise (38 minutes less a day socialising).

The other great changes in the past 10 years have included the rise in the amount of time we spend online and the proliferation of mobile devices.

Back in 2005 we spent two hours and 21 minutes a day online (which included banking, buying things, seeking information, music, film and entertainment, using the internet for work, emailing and talking in chat rooms). The latest TouchPoints now shows us accessing the internet for an astonishing four hours and 16 minutes per day.

But of course, the things we use the internet for have changed and expanded. Internet use now includes general media consumption and social media use, which just wasn’t available to us back in 2005. Our reasons for using the internet have also changed over time.

Back in 2005 we used the internet mainly for information and to communicate with others. By 2016 our motivations have completely changed and we now mainly use the internet for entertainment or to keep up to date.

The second big change is the proliferation of mobile devices. 10 years ago we didn’t have tablets, and although 87% of us owned one or more mobile phones only 1.5% of us owned a smartphone. 10 years on mobile phone ownership has practically reached saturation point with 97% of us owning one or more mobiles and smart phone ownership has really caught up with 78% of us now owning at least one.

A staggering growth in only 10 years. And this has been accompanied by tablets – in fact over half of us have a tablet which we personally use (51.7%). Indeed, nearly half of us (49%) own at least one smartphone and personally use a tablet.

So, what does this all add up to and how can these insights help us better understand the future?

We know that our media content consumption continues to grow regardless of device or platform. Our time spent with all media now stands at seven hours and 37 minutes per day – an increase of 9% on 2005.

Multimedia consumption is also growing. 10 years ago, 79% of us were consuming two or more media in the same half hour at some point during the week. This has risen to 91% of us in 2016.

We have less leisure time (in part because we are spending more time at work) and what we do spend time doing must fill an increasingly cluttered and busy part of the day. Because we are so connected via either our tablets or more likely our smartphones we have a proliferation of choice and an expectation that any content we want will and can be delivered at any time of the day in any location.

These expectations will not go away, rather we will become more sophisticated in our curation of the content we take and the ways in which we expect to be communicated with.

Our industry will need to work even harder at connecting with audiences in the ways in which they prefer to be spoken to. It used to be right time, right place – now it has become right time, right place, right device. We need to be aware of the context of those connection moments and how the context might change across the day or a week.

My prediction for 2017 is that it will continue to be challenging and demanding and we will increasingly need to continue to engage with audiences on their terms and not our own.

Belinda Beeftink is an associate director for The IPA