• by Seana Mulcahy , October 30, 2006

I know it's a cheesy headline. I myself cringe when I see the phrase in a presentation, etc. However, this is a bit different. I am really talking about being out of the box--the television, that is.

Look around, and all you see are screens: People looking at their mobile phones, PDAs, iPods, laptops, even programming in elevators. We live in a society drawn to, fixated and dependent on screens.

Let me first say, I am not the norm when it comes to TV usage. Well that's what I thought--until now. Let me ask you this, do you often sit down and watch a specific television program? If not, do you TiVo or use some sort of digital video recorder?

I was intrigued by the recent findings of the NPD Group on DVD sales. In a nutshell, DVD sales growth is still occurring, but at a slower pace than past years'. But there is yet another media shift going on here, folks. People are renting more DVDs in the TV category than any other. And of TV DVDs, the strongest growth has occurred in sales of one-hour TV dramas like "Desperate Housewives," "Lost" and "24," which tracked an increase of 48% year over year. The adult-animation category, which includes "The Family Guy" and "The Simpsons," rose 36%, while sales of science fiction titles increased 34% and half-hour comedies grew 7%.

According to eMarketer, iTunes is the leading Web site when it comes to paid video downloads in the US, with a 67% market share, compared to MovieFlix at 19% and CinemaNow at 9%. I suspect new companies and new opportunities will be popping up as streamers and providers in 2007.

So how do these new facts and figures affect us as advertisers and marketers? Well first off, they just reinforce the idea that media is getting more and more fragmented. Agencies and brands need to stop thinking in such a siloed approach when targeting consumers. Interactive or digital teams really need to throw that thinking away entirely. Stop saying, "If we only had 5% of the broadcast budget we could..." It's not a budget issue. It's back to the basics: Right message, right time, right place.

The issue is severe fragmentation among media. This is also coupled with consumers who are more time-starved than ever. With broadband being mainsream, DVRs and video on demand are gaining in popularity. Content is still king.

I'll leave you with some key findings from consumer research company Telephia:

60 % of the folks who watch TV on their cell phones and other mobile devices do so between noon and 8:00 in the evening.

Mobile video usage is not just for the kids. Half of all mobile video consumers are between the ages of 25 and 36.

70 % of mobile video users are male (as is the case with most early adopter technologies).

Mobile video users watch about 22 % of the time at home, 22 % of the time while they're commuting, 16 % of the time when they're shopping (I suspect this means when their wife is shopping and they're sitting on a bench in the mall) and 14 % of the time when they're at work.

Among all mobile TV users, ABC News was the most watched mobile TV channel in Q2 2006, securing 40% of the total mobile TV audience.

I guess I'd ask this closing question: Is it that consumers can't find the remote, or that they don't need to?