How Listeners Spend Their Time: TV vs. Online

In recent weeks, we have been showing you data on the use, and the importance in listeners’ daily lives, of social media and online activity.  (Takeaway: It’s at the center of their lives.  Only Men over 45 value their favorite radio station more than social media.)
We have also recently showed you very troubling data about TV spot-skipping. (Takeaway: When as much as half the audience blew right through it, what is your cost-per-real-point?)
Now, let’s compare these two media on a simple platform of daily time-spent. Demo by demo.  Where we don’t even factor in either the TV spot-skipping or the online passion.  Simply: where do your listener’s eyes spend their time…watching TV or looking at the Internet?
Under-45’s: Far More Time Online Than With TV

Nearly 2/3 of these (will-do-research-for-money) men under 35 are online at least two hours a day, while only 1/3 report watching TV at least two hours.  And Internet continues far ahead of TV in time-spent among the 25-44’s. Only among the 35-54’s does it even get close, with Internet still well ahead.

And similarly, among the women:  18-44’s spend much more time online than with TV.  35-54’s are nearly tied.  Among both the men and the women, it is the 45-54 cell that makes the difference. The demographic frontier has pushed up to 45:  older than that, TV still well surpasses Internet.  Younger than that, game over.
What this means to you
Radio marketing strategies are slow to change.  Stations continue to invest most of the budget in the same media we used 20 years ago.  Radio has been significantly slower than other industries in allocating a big chunk of our advertising media mix to digital/online/new media. 
Meanwhile, as players with threatened market share in a rapidly shifting competitive marketplace, radio stations ideally need to advertise simple messages to massive numbers of well-targeted people on a continuing basis.  Sounds like a job for online direct marketing, social media marketing, and well-targeted Internet advertising.
Yet, squeezing every available drop from our ever-shrinking ad budgets, we still want to get a TV spot on the air “whenever we can afford it.”
Imagine what results we could get by spending wisely and fishing where the fish really are.