A study just released by Millward-Brown, confirms what many had been predicting for sometime – while we, unsurprisingly, live in a multi-screen world, mobile devices now account for almost half of daily screen time use across the world. The far-reaching study was conducted with 12k multi-screen users (those having access to a TV and/or smartphone and/or tablet) across 30 countries, including France.
TV still preferred over smartphones and tablets in France, UK and Spain
Across the bulk of the countries studied, including both developed and developing markets, smartphones were found to be the largest single screen medium in the world for multi-screen users. Interestingly, the notable exceptions were the UK, France and Spain, all where TV leads, and Hungary, Poland, Russia and Slovakia where laptops are stronger. In France, users spend almost twice as much time in front of a TV screen each day than a smartphone screen. However, the leader in this category were by far the British who spent an average of 148 minutes/day in-front of TV screens.
Another interesting finding was that French multi-screen users seem to be less attached to screen media overall as they had the second lowest daily screen usage with just 326 minutes a day, just behind the Italians.
Ad-spending still, reportedly, not even close to lining up to consumers’ screen-time
Although the study demonstrates that TV remains strong in some markets, it’s evident that consumers are becoming increasingly multi-device oriented. Millward-Brown’s big point with this study is that advertisers’ overall ad-spending is still out of whack in-terms of media distribution as 66% still goes toward TV, with just 4% going toward mobile. Many advertisers believe that TV advertising continues to offer the best bang for their buck given its high effectiveness and measurability. However, given how rapidly consumers’ attention is getting diverted towards other, more interactive devices overtime, this will undoubtedly shift significantly at some point.
The study also provides lots of interesting insights on behaviors like multiscreening, receptivity to ads (France being the least receptive for instance), the role of each type of device, and more. You can check out the full study here.