Time Spent With Ad-Supported Media Hits All-Time Low, Social Media Usage is Up

Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, and goes something like: “Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.

It's time to move your budget from advertising to social media

This report provides some great research which supports the notion that people don't look at ads anymore, but are spending their time in social media.

As a sales and marketing organisation you need to stop advertising and swap your budget over into social. 

"The good news is that consumer time spent with media surged during 2020. The bad news is their share of time spent with media supported primarily by advertising dollars fell to its all-time low

The forecast, which is being released this morning, shows the time the average American spent with all forms of media rose 2.9% to 73 hours weekly in 2020, largely due to the impact of the global pandemic.

The time spent by the average global citizen rose 2.8% to 53 hours weekly, according to the new forecast.

But given a corresponding erosion in ad spending, coupled with greater adoption of subscription streaming services and other media during 2020, the share of time spent with ad-supported media fell to 44.8% in the U.S. and to 65.8% worldwide -- both of which are historic lows since PQ Media has been tracking it."

“As a result, consumer-driven media usage continued a nearly 20-year pattern of snatching away market share from advertising & marketing-supported media, as consumer-driven media accounted for over 55% of all media usage in the US, while its share grew to nearly 35% globally in 2020.”

Interesting to see that people looking at ads is dropping and has dropped for 20 years on a row.  Whereas people looking at other media, such as social media, is increasing.