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According to
a report from investment banker
Veronis Suhler Stevenson,
by 2007 the average American will spend 3,874 hours per
year with the major consumer media, up 21% over 1997’s
figure.
"Consumers
have increased their time spent with media substantially
over the past 25 years, owing to the almost ubiquitous
presence of wired cable in the home, the widespread
acceptance of the Internet as a
communication/education/home utility and the development
of the home video and video game markets," noted the VSS
report. And even those numbers may be low.
A researcher
at Ball State University followed 101 consumers
throughout their day and directly observed how they
consumed media and how much media they consumed. It
found that the average was more like 11 hours per day of
media consumption, a figure that would put us ahead of
the projected number for 2007.
What may be
most interesting is a related report from a
Media Post/Insight
Express study that said that almost a third
of Americans (29%) feel that they are suffering from
media overload, yet at the same time many people (47% of
consumers) feel more dependent on media than ever
before.
To bring
this point home, think about the last time you lost your
Internet connection or your cable service blacked out.
Or consider how irate you were the last time the paper
delivery person failed to deliver your paper. While we
feel overwhelmed with information, we crave more.
What does
this mean for your PR and marketing strategies? While
fragmentation and new information channels would appear
to saturate the media market, it seems that the opposite
may be occurring. The more choices we have, the more
media we consume. This means that there are more
opportunities to get the word out to targeted markets. |
