Deloitte & Touche released a new survey about the changes in media consumption. You can check out the survey on ZDNet.com
The survey is packed full of all kinds of interesting statistics. But it is this stat that caught my eye:
“85 percent of consumers still find TV advertising to have the most impact on their buying habits, but online ads are second-best, with 65 percent of consumers saying they have the most impact, beating out magazines, at 63 percent”.
It seems a little weird that people are spending more and more time on other devices such as cell phones and computers and increasing amount of time in social networks and other such spaces, yet according to this survey, TV continues to influence the buying habits of consumers.
Why is this? Is it that TV is just where we are used to getting our buying information from? Is it the way that these adverts are designed and crafted? Or, are we just not fully aware of how much the internet is influencing our buying habits?
My hunch is that people assume that they are getting their information from TV. The influence of different marketing mediums is so new I think that we are only just beginning to understand their impact on our decisions. I know that for me I get the majority of my information from the web and from conversations from my buddies. In fact most of the people in my circle don’t even really watch TV - but we all hang out on the web and hear about products through our conversations. Yeah, I think this part of the survey is not accurate. I think it misses the mark and obviously is not asking the right questions.
Even if I am off the mark I think that this second set of statistics is crucially important to the importance of conversational marketing in the social media realm:
“54 percent of consumers said they socialize via social-networking sites, chat rooms, or message boards, and 45 percent said they maintain a profile on a social-networking site”.
More and more people are interacting with this realm where regular advertising has very little traction. People don’t read banner ads or pay attention to little flashing (and quite frankly annoying) ads. What they are paying attention to is the conversation - the conversation with friends and between groups of people.
Ultimately the questions asked are: What are people talking about? What are they using? Who is using it and what do they think of the product. The passive reception of information is over. Consumers want recommendations, influence and the ability to give and receive feedback. They want to be part of the conversation not the passive receivers of information.
This is happening in the social media realm: in message boards, blogs and social networking sites. And these spaces are growing exponentially. More and more people actively participate in them. And, quite frankly, I am not sure that this survey really taps into the impact of this type of conversation and the influence on our decisions.
I am looking forward to surveys that actually work at measuring the influence of these conversations.
One thing is certain, the media landscape is undergoing major reconfiguration!!
No Comments » Posted on January 4th, 2008 by Saul Wainwright
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