People spend more time on digital platform than on TV!

From the newsletter "Media Matters" Sept 15, 2013 edition, there is a debate on whether people now spend more time on digital platforms than on TV. eMarketer has made the claim that "“Digital Set to Surpass TV in Time Sent with U.S. Media." If the measures are right and all else being equal, this means that advertising spent on digital platforms should be larger than on TV.

The newsletter criticizes the validity of the average 5:09 hours by guessing what an actual distribution of time spent on digital by percentile. For people who actually go online, it is 7 hours; for top 20 percentile, it is 14 hours per day; for top 7%, it is 20 hours per day. 20 hours per day seem high.

Let us run the same kind estimate for the TV viewing average of 3 hours. For people who actually watch TV, 4.2 hours; for top 20 percentile, it is 8.4 hours; for top 7%, it is 12 hours per day. 12 hours still seem high. Neilson’s people meter only allows 1 TV viewing at once. So how can top 20 percentile people watch more than 8.4 hours of TV everyday? If you sleep for 8 hours everyday, you must be staying home watching TV a lot when awake and not at work.

If we just assume that people spend use 1.5 digital devices concurrently, it will bring the 5:09 hours figures down to 3:33 hours. This revised number is right inline with the TV viewership. If we assume people don’t do anything else, it must suggest that everyone who is watching TV is always surfing online as well. Since Neilson’s 3-hour average already suggests that people do not do anything else in their leisure time watching TV. Hence people must be watching TV and surfing the web at the same time.

Both numbers are unrealistic. The problem with TV and online digital time is that they define the possible maximum. It is only a proxy on guessing if people are paying attention to any media channel. The fact that TV is on or an Internet request goes out and comes back does not represent the fact that people are actually paying attention. Hence, these numbers are all just best effort proxies. They cannot be used to be exact numbers. They can be used to find trends like seeing if people are watching more TV over time or not. However, you cannot compare if people are watching more TV or spending more time online. Both numbers are not accurate measures and they use different assumptions.

Hence, it is definitely false to claim whether people are watching more TV or spending more time online either way. The two numbers are not comparable. This is best solved by conducting a study with following random people around throughout the day and measure their attention on TV or online closely.