Lynsey Rollinson, Managing Partner (Strategy and Planning) at ROAST explores how mobile usage has overtaken television and how brands need to adjust to the smaller screen.
Seven and a half hours. That’s how long British adults now spend each day with their faces lit by a screen. This includes time inside their home, a working day, plus the commute, devoted to flicking, scrolling, streaming, and occasionally watching an ad.
The latest IPA Touchpoints data recently dropped our current reality – mobile usage has finally overtaken television for the first time. For decades, the TV set was the focus of attention, the place where brands could confidently buy their way into living rooms.
A World in Fragments
This shift isn’t momentary; it’s been building a for a while, but the data is a stark reminder of the shift in how we approach media planning. Historically Prime-time TV would’ve dominated a plan given high awareness and reach. TV is still undeniably effective, but there’s more we need to consider now. Brand are built through an amalgamation of TikTok clips, You-Tube pre rolls, Instagram scrolls, OOH glimpses and endorsement on your favourite podcast. I heard someone say recently ‘shared moments of mass consumption are reduced. We live in individual feeds of content’ in relation to personalisation but this stands true for planning also. The role of planners is more important now than ever as we consider millions of micro-moments, occurring daily, scattered across apps and platforms.
According to a study from App Annie, the average person taps into nine-ten different apps a day – instinctively. That’s nearly forty a month, and over fifty digital touchpoints, all nestled in the palm of your hand or waiting eagerly in your pocket. What a time to be alive as a planner, with all those apps having data to building a picture of who the hand belongs to that swipes every day.
As well as these multiple touchpoints, we also need to carefully consider the further fragments within age groups and screen usage. Take 15 to 24-year-olds -they’re spending just under five hours a day on their mobile phones – and less than two hours and 49 minutes watching TV.
Now flip that. Older audiences, like those aged 65 to 74, are doing the reverse – spending around 4 hours and 40 minutes with the TV, and just under two hours on their phones.
As those in the business, we talk a lot about media fragmentation, or what we should probably call platform fragmentation. But there’s another layer of complication for brands who seek to reach across the generations- audience fragmentation. Different generations, different behaviours, different screens.
The Attention Recession
You could say the older model was easier / more simple – buy a big reach, craft a big story, and bask in the big results and attention. Today, people swipe past your ad in less time than it takes to blink. Even ‘high attention’ moments are provisional, interrupted by notifications, autoplay videos, and the temptation to check WhatsApp.
Brands need to accept they’re in an attention recession. The winners will be the ones who build their strategy around attention and create the content that hooks you in and makes an impact, moments that does just flash by but stick long enough to be remembered. The role of a planner is more important than ever, as we seek to build lots of little moments to create our big.
Stop Treating Media and Creative Separately
This is where some brands suffer missed opportunities and need to catch up. Media planning and creative execution are too often siloed. But to survive in a fragmented world, the two must move in sync.
Think less about ‘the big creative idea’ and more about orchestrated moments to make impact. A provocative Instagram story. A funny TikTok. A contextually smart out-of-home ad that surprises. Together, these moments should work together to build brands of today for success in the future.
Remembering always that great creative isn’t enough anyway, ow much attention audiences will give your ad is predetermined by the platform that that ad is viewed on.
Test. Measure. Repeat. The brands that thrive in this environment will be the ones that are continuously testing and experimenting. Making real-time calls based on data rather than gut instinct. Media spend is now too expensive to leave anything to chance.
The New Reality
Media has changed faster than most brands have. We are living in an era of abundant screen-time, fractured attention, and fleeting loyalty. Brands that cling to old habits, planning for reach, measuring in demographics, relying on single moments, are going to fall down.
The future belongs to those who accept the new rules: fragment the platforms, unite the creative and planning, respect attention like the rare commodity it has become.
As Seen in Little Black Book.
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