Mindshare Finds Americans Plan To Spend Less Time With Media After Pandemic

Two months into the COVID-19 pandemic more Americans say one of the behavioral change they plan to make after the crisis is over is to spend less time with media. That's one of the findings from the eighth weekly tracking study from Mindshare.

Far more Americans (50%) told Mindshare they are likely/very likely to spend less time with media than those (41%) who said they are likely to spend more time with media following the pandemic.

While it is self-reported and just a projection of their future intent, the finding could be significant for the advertising and media industry at least in terms of what it says about the sentiment Americans have about their overall media behavior pre- and post-pandemic.

Mindshare previously detected some media burnout, as well as some perceived active avoidance of media during the pandemic, during an earlier wave conducted three weeks ago. In that study, conducted April 6, Mindshare found 38% of Americans said they already were limiting the time they spend with media explicitly to avoid seeing news about the coronavirus.

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Last week, Mindshare also found the number of Americans who perceive they have "run out" of media content had risen to 46%, though it did not publish similar findings in this week's report.

On a bright side for brand marketers, Mindshare also detected an uptick in the percentage of Americans who say they are aware of brands helping with the crisis. After plummeting to 31% last week, the percentage rebounded to 41% this week.

5 comments about "Mindshare Finds Americans Plan To Spend Less Time With Media After Pandemic".
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  1. PJ Lehrer from NYU, May 4, 2020 at 1:56 p.m.

    But will they still be hoarding toilet paper and drinking Tropicana orange juice?
    http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/04/my-new-normal-buying-spool-of-thread.html

  2. SDK Cruz from HealthisWealth, May 4, 2020 at 2:52 p.m.

    Nice post, I would like to say thank you for sharing this news. LEarn More

  3. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 4, 2020 at 4:23 p.m.

    Joe, I assume that Mindshare perovides demographic breaks in this study and the key finding would be whether people who are usually at work or school but are now trapped at home during the daytime and early evening hours on weekdays  think they will spend less time with the media after the crisis is over---a very likely result----and whether they think that whatever their use of media was before the pandemic, they expect it to be the same or lower when "normalcy" returns.  I assume that this was also covered in the questionnaire. Just curious about what level of detail they proivided.

  4. Joe Mandese from MediaPost, May 4, 2020 at 5:08 p.m.

    @Ed Papazian: I believe Mindshare collect demographic breaks for all the questions it asks, but it did not publish them for this question in its new report. Sorry. I reported on all the data that was published for this question.

  5. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 4, 2020 at 7:06 p.m.

    Thanks, Joe. I assumed that was the case.

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