With the growing number of platforms and screens available to users, it has become increasingly the practice to have different mediums opened at the same time.
We've heard a lot of talk on how we must market to these various mediums and platforms to be able to find where the potential customers will be hanging out at. It's finding them that's getting harder, not reaching them. Reaching them is actually getting easier than it's ever been.
As Leo Kivijarv, vice president of research at PQ Media, says, "There aren't enough hours in a day to increase time spent with media." He's saying that if people want to consume more media, they'll have to do it at the same time, otherwise there won't be enough time.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation conclusion they also said that "Once television content becomes more prevalent on the computer, it is likely that young people will communicate via IM during the natural breaks in television dialogue."
Let's talk about two important factors when people are consuming media with more than one device or screen.
First, studies show that the human brain is wired for multitasking but with limitations on how much can be processed at one time.
One study revealed that when there is a lot of information on a TV screen, for example, like headlines, key news stories or tickers, viewers had difficulty processing the information. The reason why was that none of them were interrelated. So information can't successfully be processes when it comes from different, non-related areas of content.
Why is this important to marketers? It goes back to niches. Information that is connected to a core subject is able to be processed simultaneously, whereas unrelated information can't.
Here's a way to look at it. I've hung around my nephew when he Instant Messages his friends. He may have around 10 conversations going on at the same time. If he were to suddenly want to look at the local sports stories, something would have to give, as the two wouldn't be compatible with one another.
Even when I talk with him while he's doing it, he will have to stop at times or tells me to wait while he finishes up his communication. The reason why is that I'm talking about something completely different than he's communicating to his friends about.
So if we're offering content, in whatever form, it needs to be connected together by subject or interest, rather than scattered across all sorts of topics. This is why niches are always such a powerful way of doing business online, or anywhere for that matter.
Secondly, we need to understand that media is also being consumed much differently when it is interacted with simultaneously. Now it is viewed in much shorter, quick bursts. If someone was watching a TV show and also Instant Messaging somebody, they would look back and forth between the two mediums in short periods of time. Even if it is done on the same screen the eyes and attention would still go back and forth.
So the best way to reach many of these people are through short bursts of information that are connected to one another; especially if younger people are your demographic.
We have to understand that when we offer our content, why we're doing it and to whom we're trying to reach. Some things will be offered for concurrent users, and others for those that want to spend more time interacting with it. We need to keep both in mind when we launch our various products and services in our campaigns.
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