Once You Go Online, You Never Go Back
22 February 2008The Internet is the media that “online users” spend the most time looking at, about 32.7 hours a week, according to a new IDC study.
“Online users” are defined as people who have accessed the Internet in the last 30 days. Internet time accounts for a little under half of the total average time an online user looks at all media, which is 70.6 hours a week. Coming up in second place is TV watching at 16.4 hours, which is barely above 50% of Internet time. Reading newspapers and magazines takes up only about 3.9 hours a week.
The data from IDC also shows trends among age groups. Older respondents tended to consume more newspapers, magazines and TV, while younger respondents tended more towards Internet usage.
The most frequent online uses were:
* Search engines - 84% of respondents
* Maps and navigation services - 83%
* Personal research - 77%
* E-mail - 76%
“This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers and magazines and into Internet advertising,” said IDC digital media and entertainment program director Karsten Weide. What would be interesting to see is if traditional newspapers - like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times - will continue to be some of the top companies for news and information in a purely digital world, or if the Internet can level even that playing field and allow new names to reach predominance.
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