Study shows how multi-screen consumers are changing media dynamics

12 Jun 2012

RESTON, US: comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement ( CIMM) has just released a research white paper entitled How Multi-Screen Consumers Are Changing Media Dynamics, revealing several new findings about the viewing habits of consumers who engage with media brands across multiple touchpoints.

"While TV remains the leading media channel, once TV-centric media brands now engage with their consumers across a variety of digital touchpoints. While this enhances the quality of brand engagement, it also increases the complexity of media planning and analysis by orders of magnitude," said Joan FitzGerald, comScore VP of TV & Cross-Media Solutions. "By leveraging comScore's unique single-source multi-screen measurement panel, we are radically reducing this complexity by providing media companies with actionable insights that can be used to determine how to effectively reach their target audiences and optimize cross-media planning."

Key insights from the paper include:

Consumers are Engaging with Brands Across Platforms - A study of 10 broadcast network & cable brands covering a five-week period showed that an average of 90% of consumers engaging with a given brand did so on TV, while 25% did so online and 12% via online video.

Online Video & Multi-Screen Consumers are Most Engaged and Loyal Brand Consumers - Online video consumption proves to closely associate with consumer engagement with media brands overall. For most of the media brands, the multi-screen consumers who use the media brands via TV and online video spend more time with the content on any platform, and spend more time consuming the content on TV.

Multi-Screen Consumer are Demographically "On Target" - The study found that the segments of multi-screen consumers showing the highest propensity to engage tended to correlate strongly with those brands' key demographic targets, suggesting that engagement on other platforms represents an important extension of the key demographic audiences' use and enjoyment of the media brands.

Consumers are Using Digital Platform Concurrently with TV to Enrich Experience - During the five-week period of analysis, 60% of a media brand's consumers accessed TV and Online during concurrent 30-minute increments. 29% of the media brand's consumers accessed Facebook concurrently with their TV viewing, suggesting digital platforms may be used to supplement the viewing experience and drive multi-platform engagement.

"The media landscape is fragmenting at an ever-increasing rate, so having a measurement solution that traverses multiple screens is critical for everyone in the media ecosystem including brands, networks and advertisers," said Jane Clarke, managing director, CIMM.

"This new research conducted by CIMM and comScore offered a significant breakthrough in the use of new methodologies to help tackle the challenges of cross-platform measurement, revealing important findings about the cumulative reach, exposure and engagement of media brands and advertisers in a multi-screen environment."

Download a copy of the study.