Time Spent with the Internet

While there are myriad reasons why people’s time spent with internet media stayed flat over the past year — chief among them is faster broadband speeds and more experience with the web allows people to be more efficient consumers — the trend has implications for media companies and marketers.

time spent graph a

Originally the internet was a great “unknown.” We saw marked increases in the time spent online as people began to try out this new medium and become acquainted with it. The amount of time people were dedicating to the internet grew significantly because it took people time to sit down and figure out how to use it and where they should be going. These were the days of “hard-core surfing”; people just floating through the internet, not really sure what they were looking for, but just spending time looking around.

Now people’s use is more defined. People who have been online awhile understand how to use the internet sufficiently and can maximize the time they have to spend on it. They generally know which sites they are going to when they log in. For new people starting out, the proliferation of website advertising (i.e., websites listed in commercials, affiliated with brands, etc.) helps direct people to where they want to go. Similarly, Google and other search engines have become staples of internet use so instead of surfing around to find what you’re looking for you can simply go to Google, type in your search terms, and all the hard work is done. The icing on top of all this is faster connection speeds. With broadband there is no waiting for pages to load and connections to happen.

(Source:  Advertising Age July 2009)

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