• by Tom Hespos , July 5, 2005

You may have seen a Center For Media Research bulletin float across your desktop today with some topline results of a BIGresearch survey on media multitasking in which nearly 70 percent of adults 18 or older say they multitask while using online media. The same research study gives lower percentages of multitaskers for media such as newspapers, magazines and mail. Sixty-nine percent of 18-plus adults said they were multitasking when listening to the radio. To find slightly more multitasking going on while consuming online media was at first surprising to me, but then I thought about it for a bit and it seemed to make sense to me.

I'm not sure whether BIGresearch has a more detailed breakout in its survey, but I wouldn't be very surprised to see varying levels of involvement with different types of online media. For instance, I know many people who use Instant Messaging applications such that they rarely devote 100 percent of their attention to it. Personally, I rarely use IM unless it's in conjunction with something else. I'll use IM while I'm on the phone, or while surfing the web or using some other medium, because I don't need to devote 100 percent attention to IM. Even though it's a two-way medium, it doesn't require high involvement.

Contrast that with the involvement of an online community. Often, when I'm leaving comments on a blog or posting to a favorite message board, it does take up 100 percent of my attention at the time. I've got only so much mental bandwidth, and letting people know about my particular view on an issue or getting my two cents' worth in an online conversation doesn't always allow me to be doing something else simultaneously.

My point here is that there can be varying degrees of engagement in any one of the media mentioned in the Center for Media Research piece. Yet, I know that this topline will start appearing in communications strategies documents, possibly to support pigeonholing online as a low-involvement medium.

Truth be told, multitasking is likely contributing to advertisers' problems with breaking through to the consumer. The problem is complex enough when one medium is involved, but what if someone is simultaneously checking their e-mail, watching a television program and talking on the phone. It becomes incredibly difficult to get a commercial message to resonate in such situations.

But there will be television programs, radio shows and yes, even online applications that have higher degrees of involvement than media venues within even the same channel. And involvement needs to be taken into consideration for each venue on your media plan.

So, I'd like to see a release from BIGresearch some time in the future that shows, at a minimum, the average engagement of different sub-media within each channel.