• April 24, 2003

Over two-thirds of consumers in an online survey said they multi-task in their use of media, consuming more than one medium at once and splitting their attention away from ads, according to BIGresearch of Columbus, Ohio. The most common activities, practiced by over 20% of respondents, involved watching TV while going online or reading a newspaper. Reading or going online while listening to the radio were also fairly common. Magazines seemed to suffer the least erosion, with fewer than one in 10 reporting that they multi-task while reading magazines. Simultaneous media usage, "when not understood, creates much of the 'slippage' in marketing campaigns, which adversely affects return on investment," said Dr. Joe Pilotta, vice president-research of BIGresearch and one of the study's authors.