Last year we conducted some research where we asked individuals if they had in the past week used a connected device while watching TV.
We found that 80% of smartphone owners had used their device while watching television and about ¾ of laptop and tablet owners had as well.
When looking at millennials, virtually all, 92% said they had used a connected device while watching TV in the past week and interestingly, almost half had accessed content related to what was on television.
These numbers for multi-tasking are quite high and we were left wondering exactly what was happening during this multi-tasking activity.
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80% of smartphone owners have used their smartphone while watching TV or being in the same room where a TV was on
Question is related to ‘the past week’
A third (33%) said they accessed content with a connected device related to the content on the TV
Q6a.You mentioned that you own or use each of the devices listed below. Which of these devices have you used in the past week while watching TV or being in the same room where the TV was on?
Q6b. You said that you have used at least one of your devices during the past week while watching TV or being in the same room where the TV was on. Did any of the content you accessed on your device(s) relate to the content on the TV at that time?
The two important questions that remained:
clarification
Design note: we want to have the values come in on animation.
Average usage first, primary usage then overall attention.
Please use a layout that is more dynamic and impactful. Maybe use large circles or other formats we used in M&M??
Note: Values are relative to device on the top. e.g. Tablet and TV, tablet has attention 74.9% of the time
When do devices are being used, the natural engagement form factor of tablet and smartphone defines where the attention is.
For example, when a smartphone and laptop are both on, 62% of the time, attention is on the smartphone.
And clearly, while the TV is the most on device as we saw, it becomes the secondary screen when other devices are introduced.
Television performs weakest against all other devices
Design note: Tables may be a bit difficult for audience to read. Can we think of a more visually impactful design?
We started looking at some heavy data on device usage and attention across the experience. Here we want to look a bit further at what was happening with the various devices throughout the experience, partly by looking closely at a few respondents.
We are describing a behavior here as any shift in attention. A behavior can be paying attention to a device, switching attention to another.
Overall we found high levels of multi-tasking behaviours where in 60% of the respondents we observed over 10 distinct behaviours, and 40% had over 20.
We also noted that when in group settings, there were on average 4x more distinct behaviors, and while men and women multi-task about the same, those under 35 experience more shifts in attention across devices.
Data: Group settings (30 vs. 8)
Men vs. Women (26 vs. 27)
Design note: Can we not use a list if possible?
So what does this mean for all of us running campaigns across screens and potentially reaching individuals in a multi-tasking environment?
Distraction level, or the absence of attention on a device is an important factor to whether ads are seen. The ad load of a device can also magnify this as well.
In our experience we recorded when ads were naturally occurring on each device. While television had clearly the highest natural ad load over any device, the relatively low attention had a dramatic effect on the percentage of ads that were in field of attention.
It is important to note here that the natural occurrence of ads on the smartphone was quite low thus we have notated the attention value of being a too small of a base size to be representative. We would expect it to be closer around that of the tablet.
On digital screens, ads are typically triggered by a user action
Play around with wording for #2. TV is the go-to yes but . . . We are conditioned etc.