Versatile Amphibian

If you listen to Jimmy Wales, then traditional media is dead . Consumers in 2012 want their media to be more interactive, more social. They want to choose what they consume and when they consume it. The safe, constrained world of the schedule and page layout is just so 20th Century. So long traditional media and thanks for the memories. If I get sentimental, I’ll access them anytime, anywhere I want them. Yet traditional media endures. TV viewing hours are up 4% YoY in the UK. Print advertising not only has more impact on consumers than online, but its advantage is actually increasing . Why? Because media is a social experience, something best enjoyed together. It gives us something to discuss, to debate and when things get too much, to escape with. Nearly two-thirds of us discuss TV shows with friends or colleagues at least once a week, nearly half of us will discuss what we’ve read in the news and a third chat about books. On-demand services are uncompromising, individual exper...

This State of the Media Democracy B-side covers online recommendation, an interesting subject that was mentioned only briefly in the main report. Social recommendation online remains very much a la mode. With the launch of pinterest, recommendation has kicked into a new gear since consumers can now create their own beautiful, curated shop front of products. The question for us was whether the mass market of consumers were willing to give and take recommendations and therefore give us a hint as to the long term success of the new wave of rich social sharing sites. Overall we found that people were more likely to take advice than give it. 62% of respondents had bought a product based on online recommendations and 68% had decided not to buy because of negative reviews. On the opposite side of the transaction, only a third of consumers had posted a review. Further analysis shows that the second statistic masks some interesting underlying trends. It turns out that smartphone users are abou...

My latest State of the Media Democracy B-Side covers an emotive and controversial issue – that of cord cutting. For those of you not familiar with the term, cord cutting refers to customers cancelling their pay-TV subscriptions and replacing them with free or paid-for on-demand services. As the chart below shows, the proportion of respondents subscribing to pay-TV services actually went up in all markets in 2011. This is despite the fact that in 2010 a relatively large number of respondents (about a quarter in France and Japan) said that they were intending to dispense with their subscriptions in favour of free or paid-for streamed alternatives. So why didn’t they? The answer is two-fold, I think. Firstly the number of people with the equipment to actually cut the cord is fairly limited as a proportion of the total. Most consumers with connected-ready TVs and Blu-ray players haven’t actually connected them because they lack the requisite (and expensive) Wi-fi dongle and the TV is too f...

My latest State of the Media Democracy B-Side covers gaming, which is mentioned in the report in a couple of areas, but definitely deserves a deeper dive. Having been an avid gamer since the days of the NES , it’s good to see that traditional gaming on consoles remains strong – nearly half of households now have one and 15% have connected it to the Internet. Console ownership has increased by about 20% year-on-year, which is pretty impressive given the less than perfect economic conditions and the considerable cost of the devices and their games. Purchasing through the console was surprisingly prevalent with 28% of people who had their console Internet connected saying that they purchased something through it at least once a month in 2011. Consoles are the simplest way for many households to connect their TV to the Internet, so people’s willingness to buy through them is a positive sign for the wider on-demand content industry. Only 3% bought or hired a movie in 2011 on the console th...

Deloitte’s 6th annual State of the Media Democracy report was released today. There is so much data in the survey that to discuss it all would take a novel, so over the next couple of days I’ll try to provide some insights and perspectives into subjects that didn’t make the cut. A Media Democracy B-Side , if you will. First up, eReaders, via media favourites and device ownership. Deloitte's UK consumer survey shows that professional media, be it on TV, in print or on the radio, is as popular as ever. 50% of respondents said that TV was their favourite type of media and despite falling circulations, 40% rated newspapers in their top 3 (although only 6% placed it #1). TV and print adverts were also rated as massively more impactful than online and social equivalents and after search are the principal way in which consumers discover websites. A desire to access content from traditional channels on non-traditional formats may be driving uptake of consumer technology. We estimate that ...