Published on the 23/07/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
When Australians sit in front of the TV tonight, three quarters will brandish the remote in one hand and a mobile device in the other: marketers are being challenged to cut through the clamour…
Parents of teenagers may not be surprised to learn about the device-juggling that takes place on the nation’s sofas, but brand managers and marketing executives wanting to attract the attention of online consumers should take heed because they need to develop cross-platform strategies and applications which can attract the attention of these online dilettantes who skip from one application and medium to another – even using devices in parallel.
According to a new survey released by Mi9, a joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment, which surveyed 499 Australians as part of a broader global analysis commissioned by Microsoft, although 68 percent of people will have one eye on the TV while using the second device to graze for content, 49 percent may use the second device for online shopping pointing to a lucrative market lurking nightly in front of the box.
It’s something Australia’s banks are already wise to, having identified sharp spikes in tablet traffic to online banking sites during the advertisement breaks of popular television programmes. For bank CIOs the challenge is about ensuring capacity to cope with the spikes – but for online marketers, there’s a need to ensure campaigns account for this multi-screen mentality and understand the different motivations people have when using a specific device.
Australian survey respondents reported that technology was less central to daily life than did their peers in the US and UK, which may explain why Australians believe there is value in being “always on” where British and American survey respondents were somewhat resentful of technology’s dominance of their daily lives.
Besides the couch surfers, the report identified a further group of people using multiple screens to access information on one device and then complete a transaction on another – for example they may see an advertisement or cinema time on a smartphone, and then boot up a laptop or tablet to buy a product or ticket.
Mi9 says that it’s important organisations wanting to engage with customers online are aware of this growing trend and develop content and applications which support the peripatetic persuasions of the “always-on” consumer , allowing them to seamlessly surf between devices. The full report can be downloaded here.
