The Positive Side of Multi-Tasking
In late May, the 2015 MRIA National Conference in Toronto brought together industry professionals from the advertising, media, marketing and research worlds. The three day summit, which was hosted by the MRIA and also sponsored by Ipsos, focused on storytelling in market research.
During the event, Michael Rodenburgh, Executive Vice President for Ipsos in Western Canada, hosted a presentation titled "TV is Dead. Or is it Really?" Michael weighed in on the current state of television, exploring how it is faring in today's changing marketing environment.
Michael spoke with Ipsos Ideas to share some of the key findings and tips for TV advertisers.
Q: In what ways is the media environment changing among consumers?
A: There are important shifts happening in the traditional media world that marketers need to pay attention to. For instance, traditional TV consumption among younger generations is without a doubt decreasing. But at the same time, for those 50 years of age and over, there is actually a slight increase. So depending on your target market you're going to have to start to adjust your media plan in order to reach consumers.
Q: There has been a lot of buzz lately about cord cutters. Is TV really dead?
A: Not at all. Every day professionals in the marketing world are bombarded with statistics that suggest that the media environment of yesterday is falling apart, but that's really not the case. While it's true that the media landscape is changing quickly, penetration of TV remains very high. In 2014, TV penetration in Canada was at 96.5%, compared to 99% in 2009 (source: TV Bureau).
But, one of the most significant things happening to TV these days is the dramatic growth of DVRs, with penetration growing to 54% in 2014 from 17% in 2009 (source: TV Bureau). With the growth in DVRs, marketers are starting to question whether TV is an effective medium.
Q: What impact will this growth in DVRs have on ad recall?
A: With a DVR you can effectively skip over entire portions of commercial breaks with the click of a button. So the logic of many is that this is effectively nullifying the impact of advertising. We conducted research at Ipsos to explore the truth in that belief.
First, it's important to frame the problem with some basic stats. We need to understand that DVR usage is still the minority. Based on our data, it accounts for 23% of all TV viewing time in Canada. Interestingly, this is just a bit higher than the proportion of time Canadians spend watching TV content online, which according to our data accounts for 18%. To be clear, we made sure to specify that this 18% isn't online video content that is not supported by advertising, rather this is typical TV programming available on TV which is supported by TV advertising.
What we found is that globally DVR use does not seem to be eroding TV advertising efficacy. In Canada, it's a slightly different story. Light (under 20% of TV viewing on DVR) to moderate (21% to 40% of TV viewing on DVR) users over-index on ad recall. This is likely because they are not exclusively using their DVRs and therefore are still exposed to ads, combined with the fact that they actually consume more television.
However, heavy DVR users (40%+ of TV viewing on DVR) do have lower ad recall. Among the heavy DVR users, their number of TV viewing hours is exactly the same as non-DVR users, and since a lot of their consumption is by DVR they have a lower likelihood to recall seeing any given TV ad.
Q: What effect does multitasking have on ad recall?
A: There's no doubt that multitasking is very prevalent today, especially among younger viewers. The question then becomes, when multitasking, will viewers still be exposed to a TV ad and able to recall it? It turns out that for at least one of our clients, multitasking doesn't have an impact on ad recall - it may even potentially help.
I'm sure you're asking how that could be. Well, for one thing, if you're multitasking, you are more likely to remain in the room and potentially still be exposed to the ads during the commercial breaks. If a relevant ad comes up, there's a higher chance it will capture your attention. So, multitasking is much less problematic than the issue of DVRs.
