What’s your device personality?
Mobile phones aren't just for keeping in touch anymore.
Phones are becoming caretaker-like devices, helping us manage our day to day,
and other findings from Microsoft's latest screen research.
Josh Kolm 1 hour ago
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Understanding the roles each screen has in a Canadian’s life
can help marketers make better decisions when they plan their multi-screen
campaigns, and new research from Microsoft Advertising shows exactly what each
of those roles are.
This year, in “The Evolution of the Multi-Screening
Canadian,” Microsoft Advertising used research commissioned from Ipsos Media to
combine interviews with 20 Canadians representative of a mix of demographics
with a questionnaire of 1,000 Canadians that was in-market from April to May of
this year.
Mobile phones, the study has found, have morphed from a
device used to help people keep in touch into one that also acts as a
“caregiver.” Of those surveyed, 53% said their phones occupied their time when
they were on the go in the previous week, with 37% using it to help manage
their day-to-day affairs and 27% saying they used it to shop online.
TV continues to moves away from being a group viewing
experience to a passive activity that is more and more personalized to an
individual’s taste. Two-thirds of TV owners have some form of
internet-connected TV, be it a smart TV or one that’s connected through an OTT
device, PC or gaming console. More than half of Canadians say they rarely watch
a show when it’s scheduled, with 62% watching more than one episode in a row.
In terms of multi-screening, 82% of those with a connected TV multi-screen,
compared to 69% of those with a regular set.
Even for the screens that have maintained the same role in
our lives, there is some telling data about how they are used by the modern
consumer. Tablets are used more for exploration and the discovery of new
content, with 56% using their tablet to search for information, 41% for
shopping and between 43% and 49% using it for different entertainment
activities.
Personal computers are still the powerhouse platform for
most tasks. Within the previous week, 80% of those surveyed searched for
information, with 87% saying it was the preferred method for finding
information about personal interests (compared to 80% for television, 66% for
print publications, 46% for smartphones and 44% for tablets). 60% used it to
manage personal affairs, 54% shopped, and it was the clear preference for
productivity tasks (91% emailed and 63% worked on documents).
No surprise, multi-screen consumption is a reality, with 75%
of Canadians using more than one screen at once, and half use them in sequence,
or start an activity on one device before continuing it on another. And the
brand implication to this is clear: 74% of consumers remember an ad when it is
viewed across multiple platforms.
The trend skews younger, but multi-screening isn’t an
exclusive millennial activity: while 86% of Canadians that are between 18 and
34 years old use two or more screens simultaneously, that numbers holds at 57%
for those over 55. The most popular combinations involve a smartphone, with 75%
using it at the same time as a PC and 64% using it while they watched TV. In
both cases, 80% of those people were using their smartphones as the secondary
screen. Meanwhile, 61% used their computers at the same time as their
television.
While 20% of campaigns in 2013 had multi-screen elements,
that’s estimated to grow to almost half by 2016, so knowing how each screen can
best fit into that is vital to an effective strategy. PCs and gaming consoles
tend to dominate attention because the activities we tend to use them for
require direct focus, while TVs, tablets and smartphones are more passive, and
used either in the background or to supplement what we are doing on other
devices. For example, the study says the higher prevalence in those with
connected TVs multi-screening, combined with the secondary nature of
smartphones, suggests that commercials on television could be more effective if
they encourage some kind of second-screen activity.
