media

EMarketer's new study shows the time U.S. adults spend daily using mobile devices (not including phone calls) has more than doubled in the past two years. And in 2012 alone, mobile device usage looks to grow nearly 52%, to about 82 minutes per day.

Last year "non-talk" mobile device use passed print as the fourth most-used major media.

As 2012 is shaping up, the ranking (TV is top, then online, radio, mobile, and print) stays the same. But while television and online are growing in use, broadcast radio and (especially) print are slipping. Even online (using non-mobile computers) is seeing the pace of its growth slow. 

"Mobile, by contrast, is growing quickly from a small base — and growth in time spent is also being boosted by fast uptake of smartphones and tablets, which have still penetrated only a minority of all consumers," eMarketer explains. "As more U.S. consumers continue to acquire these devices, and current owners shift more of their digital activities to mobile and portable devices, mobile is grabbing an ever-greater share of time with all media — potentially at the expense of faster online growth."

Ad dollars, as we've seen, have not caught up to these shifts in media usage. While U.S. adults will average 11.7% of their media time on mobile devices, just 1.6% of ad spending will go there.

Read eMarketer's summary here.

Paul Verna's analysis shows content publishers (e.g. news sources, video services, and even Internet radio) are making significant inroads with effectively using Facebook and Twitter to increase audience.

As of February, "content engagement" by Facebook users is up 46% compared to before Facebook introduced its "Timeline" interface.

Meanwhile, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism says 39% of Twitter users say "most of the news they got on Twitter in January 2012 was not material they would have read elsewhere." Facebook's percentage 34%. Doing the math with user estimates for the two services, eMarketer figures "more than 11 million Twitter users and more than 48 million Facebook users" use the services to discover news and content.

"Marketers who are savvy about how to use Facebook are focusing... on the site’s strength as a content portal, its viral power and its ability to deliver qualitative and quantitative feedback on brand campaigns," Verna writes in his report, called "Facebook and Twitter as Media Platforms: News, Video, Music and Games."

The report is availble here. Read eMarketer's summary here.

"These days, even the stalwarts of traditional media make themselves available on call, on screens of all sizes, and in evolving ecosystems of free and paid versions," writes Peter Osnos in The Atlantic. "What were once simply great newspapers, magazines, television, and radio are now websites with all the trappings, and that's where the audiences seem to be headed in droves."

The nation's most-established and traditional sources of news have all made very significant investments in digital distribution: online video, blogs, photo galleries, podcasting, mobile applications, widgets, and more.

"Major public radio stations, such as WNYC in New York, WBUR in Boston, and WBEZ in Chicago, have also turned their websites into bastions of multimedia to build their audience share."

What of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)? While "not yet the moneymaker forecasted for it," it is useful to spread "the word for those digital products that are generating cash."

Read "Even Old Media Institutions Are Acting Like New Media" in The Atlantic online here.

With so many devices and so much content, consumers often multitask and abosrb multiple forms of media at the same time. "For marketers, the downside of multitasking is self-evident: a distracted audience," writes eMarketer.

But there are plenty of opportunities as well. "A brand that’s prepared to meet the consumer on multiple platforms -- with useful things to say in each venue -- can engage its audience more deeply than ever."

You can find more from eMarketer here.

Last year news media "entered a new era," writes the Pew Research Center. "The age of mobile, in which people are connected to the web wherever they are... the new era brings mixed blessings." That's the big takeaway from Pew's new report, "The State of the News Media 2012."

For radio in particular, "digital options are beginning to have an impact" on AM/FM, "especially in the mobile realms." Pew notes that nearly 40% of people listen to online-only audio services (a number which eMarketer expects to double by 2015). "Even more worrisome for AM/FM radio, in-car listening via smartphones nearly doubled in the last year to 11% of people who own cellphones. And carmakers are installing new models with internet-ready listening," writes Pew. 

One of the biggest names in news radio, NPR, saw a drop in total listening "for the first time in years, but the organization is making headway in developing digital platforms to reach new audiences," the report states.

Overall though, Pew repeats what it wrote last year: "the news industry... finds itself more a follower than a leader shaping its business." The industry is following a handful of tech giants (like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) which are "rapidly moving to consolidate their power by becoming makers of 'everything' in our digital lives."

Though in 2011 "traditional news operations also took new steps to monetize the web in their own right," five tech companies accounted for nearly 70% of all web ad revenue.

But it may be the mobile devices those tech companies produce -- especially tablets -- that preserves the "demand for long-form, quality journalism," argues Chris Hughes, who recently bought The New Republic.

"In sum," concludes Pew, "the news industry is not much closer to a new revenue model than a year earlier and has lost more ground to rivals in the technology industry. But growing evidence also suggests that news is becoming a more important and pervasive part of people’s lives. That, in the end, could prove a saving factor for the future of journalism."

You can find Pew's report here.