May 15, 2007

According to Media-Screen's "Netpop-Play" report, high-speed Internet users spend almost fifty percent of their overall spare time online.

Media-Screen's research states that the average Internet user spends about an hour and forty minutes of his or her typical weekday spare time online. Over half of that time was devoted to entertainment and communication.

The report also notes a range of users' spare time activities, and found that email and personal Internet surfing trumped TV viewing, sometimes by a large factor.

"The results were not that broadband users spend more time online, but that online marketing is still vastly underutilized in proportion to that time," said Josh Crandall of Media-Screen.

He added "currently, the proportion of advertising resources devoted to the Web (about 7 percent, according to Zenith Optimedia) is nominal, relative to the value it generates in interest and engagement among fans. As more of the population goes on the Web and there are more marketing channels, it will be imperative for the entertainment industry to know how to effectively allocate marketing and advertising dollars."

Estimates for U.S. online ad spending as a percentage of the overall market are based on Internet Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers data, and are similar to the Zenith numbers. About 10 percent of ad dollars will go online in less than three years from now, up from 6.7 percent in 2007.

High-speed Internet users have been spending more time online for many years now. The "broadband effect" has been credited with increasing time spent online and the range of online activities conducted.

As the 2005 Forrester Research/HeadlightVision "It's a Broadband Life" report noted, "The essence of the Broadband Effect is that when what consumers can do changes, what they will do changes dramatically."

eMarketer senior analyst Ben Macklin says "a variety of data shows that the Internet is an equally important entertainment platform for broadband users as it is a communication platform."

He added "this is a broadband phenomenon, and not only are high-speed Internet users watching, listening and interacting with online entertainment content, they are also actively creating it."

Source: eMarketer