People spend more and more time on the internet, as research conducted by Gfk in partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reveals. In fact, this medium saw a constant growth in the average daily time spent online, as the study presented by emarketer shows. From 2:34 the average daily time spent on the Internet grew to 2:56 in 2011, reaching an average of 3:07 today.
The only medium that benefits of the attention of the US consumer more than the Internet is TV, but it is important to notice that the average daily time spent watching TV shows a decreasing trend – perhaps because of the rise of more sophisticated recording systems. Video games were the only other media that gain time in while magazines, as TV, managed to retain the US consumer’s attention. People spent the most time online on social networks, an activity with a continuous increase in the average daily time spent online from 0:26 to 0:37 in 2017.
Almost 40 minutes per day on an average is not at all insignificant, and this is an important aspect that marketers need to know. Other activities preferred by US web users are email (with 33 minutes per day on an average), online video (24 minutes), using search (22 minutes), playing online games (17 minutes). Reading blogs, listening to online radio, reading online newspapers and magazines were activities that got under 10 minutes on average per day.
Brandon Webb of Hurricane Media noted that, “Over 3 hours spent online on a daily basis is a significant amount of time. For businesses and marketers, this time transforms into opportunities of engaging with customers, getting feedback and promoting various products and services. There’s no question this trend will only continue to increase.”
Another interesting finding of this research is that people find out about TV shows that can be viewed online from friends/relatives/word-of-mouth (49%), ads (30%), from social media sites (26%), from search results (24%), from TV (23%) and from listings on websites/apps offering TV shows (20%).