Here in the science wing of The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters our never-ending battle against the forces of ignorance and trendiness sometimes forces us to publish some actual facts. You remember those, right? Those were the things we used to rely on before the online crowd introduced us to "metrics."
For the benefit of the few who are still interesting in understanding what's really happening in the world -- and because no one loves you like I do -- I have taken the trouble of producing some graphs or charts (I can never figure out the difference) that demonstrate how live television continues to dominate the media landscape.
The following have been produced from Nielsen's 2012 Q2 Cross-Platform Report which was released within the past few days and, to a substantial degree, discredit just about everything our chattering media geniuses have been predicting for the past 10 years.
And whatever you do, don't show these graphs to Bill Gates...
From FoxNews.com, January 2007
Bill Gates: Internet Will Revolutionize Television
DAVOS, Switzerland — The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.
"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had"We're laughing, Bill, we're laughing.
Useful. Bob, check this article out: the author says he is going back to live TV, and ehjoying every bit of it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mobiledia.com/news/163381.html
in the top graph, should that be watching "live tv content online"?
ReplyDeleteotherwise, you have two numbers in two graphs that are different, but labelled the same.
Since you're discussing trends, these graphs seem a bit pointless and useless without comparison to historical data and other context. How have these numbers changed since Bill Gates' talk in 2007?
ReplyDeleteAlso, since we're talking about this in the context of ads, can we reaching the same audiences on TV today as in 2007? If not, how do we proceed?
I'd also be interested to see what viewers are actually doing during these times... are they responding to ads?
ReplyDeleteAre they just watching TV and doing nothing?
etc...
Apparently not even 20-year-olds enjoy watching stuff they care about on tiny screens with bad sound. As much as people profess to hate advertising, I bet it's a lot more effective on a 60" HD screen with surround sound than it is on an iPad.
ReplyDeleteMost of the disconnect marketers have with the internet comes from their desire to make it do things it's not good at.