A few months ago I reported that the Online Publishers Association (OPA) was getting ready to study the media consumption habits of U.S. consumers and this week, as promised, the results are in.
The complete results are available at the OPA website, but here are some salient points:
The study profiles
consumers who had accessed the Internet from work in the past 30 days ("at-work users"), and contrasts them with Internet users who hadn't ("non-work users"), and findings suggest that compared to
at-home users, at work users (about 52.8 million of them) are significantly more likely to be aged 18-34 (45% vs. 26%), are more likely to be highly educated (70% have at least a bachelor's degree vs.
50%) and have considerable spending power (45% have household income greater than $75,000 vs. 22%).
More importantly, the study investigated the overall media usage of at-work users and revealed
that this group now spends more time on the web (34% of total media minutes) on a typical Monday-Friday than they spend watching TV (30%). Email use was purposely excluded from the questionnaire and
26% are spent listening to the radio. Even among non-work users, the amount of time spent on the Internet during the workweek is second only to TV.
Not surprisingly, the study confirmed that
daytime is prime time for the Internet. While Internet usage is notably strong throughout the day in comparison to other media, the Internet completely dominates daytime media use in the same way that
television dominates evenings.
The survey also revealed that at-work users consider Internet ads to be richer in information than ads in traditional media. They further indicated that online
advertising was their preferred way to receive marketing messages about new products and information about companies. Most significantly, online advertising was cited as the number one form of
advertising that helps them decide what to buy.
Of course, we have to consider the source...