The Goldfish Phenomenon: Decoding Screen Time for Today's Digital Consumer

#Consumer #attention spans are shrinking is what marketers hear every day. The consumer has less time and more to do, therefore, a common analogy that became popular since Microsoft released a study few years ago is that,

The human attention span is less than that of a Goldfish which is just 9 seconds!

And then, we have seen this line being thrown around in #marketing presentations across the board. Even today, most #digital ads in #video form are designed to be created for a consumer that is impatient and busy, they last for 15-20 seconds. Even Television commercials are getting shorter.

By the way if this article has been able to hold your attention till now, you can congratulate yourself on crossing the 8 second mark!

Consumers and the Goldfish: Where is your Consumer Spending his time?

So the question is- is this actually true? Do consumers really have just 8 seconds to spend on a brand? Has the advent of #Digital really changed the consumer's consumption pattern? This article attempts to answer a few of these questions and more.

After all, keeping the basics right, the truth is that if #marketers were to blame human attention spans for their #Brand #Message and #Advertising as a reason for marketing #campaigns not working, then of what use is good old marketing!

Let's first understand what's with the consumer attention span and where is the consumer moving and spending most of his time. The average time spent by an #Indian consumer across media including, TV, Print, Outdoor Hoardings, Internet etc has not changed much. The time spent by a consumer in a day on all media in 2019 is 320 Minutes or about 5 hours

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Based on the annual Media Trends Report by Zenith for the Indian market, we see that the amount of time dedicated by the consumer to all media has gone from 270 Minutes in 2013 to 320 Minutes in 2019 and it is projected to be 348 minutes by 2021. If this is to be true by 2021, then in the last 8 years the average consumer would not have added more than 1 hour to his total time dedicated on media.

Changes in Consumer Content Consumption Patterns and More

So the question is if time spent by a user on media is going up then why are attention spans shrinking? Is it the way the consumer dedicates it across media, which has caused the change. The answer is yes!

The entry of digital in India 25 years ago in 1995, has probably not impacted India as much as the growth of Internet in the last 2 years due to growth of #Jio since 2016. India crossed the 500 Million internet users mark this year.

So while other media like TV and newspaper were around for a long time, the consumer's attention span and time spent on media went through a disruption with #Digital opening up a new world of possibilities.

• Digital is the single largest media driving incremental growth in the consumer time spent on media
• India being mobile first with 80% of all internet traffic in India being mobile, the media recording the largest growth in time spent by consumer is Mobile Internet

Role of Digital in Transforming Consumer Attention Spans

Indians in 2013 vs 2019 aren't really spending more time on TV, but their time spent on mobile devices has gone up by 4 times! While an Indian consumer in 2013 spent about 10 minutes on mobile internet, now they spend 54 minutes which is nearly an hour. I am sure most of the metro city users of mobiles would be spending much more time on their mobile device, however this averages out the impact across India. If we look at how the Indian user spent 320 minutes on media, we see that roughly 1.3 hours is dedicated to digital which is what has got added.

Coming back to attention spans, it would be safe to say that attention spans have not shrunk but become selective!

Sorry Goldfish, but human attention spans are not shrinking like yours but they are evolving.

As consumers have more choices, more on demand options for the kind of use that they want to make of their time, brands and advertisers have to work harder to stay relevant. Making things short will not make them sweet enough for this Selective Consumer.

3 Factors Shaping the New Age Consumer's Screen Time

So what are the big changes that is chasing the consumer's attention span. The below deep dives into trends in #digital #content that are affecting this attention span.

1.Content Volume on Digital is exploding, Digital Advertising is Fueling it

There are so many things competing for the consumer's attention on the #Mobile Device that a user has to be #selective because after all, while the content can be infinite but the consumer's time is not.

As digital continues to expand its #reach it is also becoming an essential part of the #media #mix for many #advertisers. If we look at the growth of advertising spends on digital, we can see that the spends on digital would have more than doubled since the last 5 years by 2021.

What this means is that apart from content on digital, consumers are also exposed to a large amount of ads. If we plot a heat map of where the user's eye travels on a mobile screen within the first 10 seconds, the patterns would turn out to be surprising.

2. Content, Content and more Content - Beginning of the OTT Era

Consumers are wading in a sea of content on digital today. There is subscription based content, free content, free + premium content and much more. Over the TV (OTT) players that essentially launched in India for letting consumers' catch up on content that they missed on TV. So #Star #network had a #HotStar, #Sony had a #SonyLiv and so on. However, with the entry of many original #content providers, like #Netflix and #Amazon, we are undergoing a content explosion on #digital. The #consumer has a lot of choice when it comes to content, and so do the content providers.

The average Indian User today has 2-3 Digital Content Apps downloaded in his mobile device.

The below table gives a quick comparison of #Indian #Subscriber #base vs #US Subscriber base. This table is from an industry report dated Aug'18. Just to give perspective this #HotStar has crossed the 150 Mn Subscriber mark in 1 year, 2Xing its subscriber base.

3.Regional is the new Flavour - Let's #Localize

As more and more #first time #internet users come online in #India, there is massive boom in consumption of #regional content. These users prefer consuming content in the their own #native language. Even an English or Hindi speaking user may be inclined to consume content in his/her own language. There is a 2.5X growth in the number of #vernacular users as compared to English users.

Nearly 40% of the #OTT market viewership in India is driven by #Regional content. Perhaps, the biggest #challenge for any content provider across #digital and #traditional #media is to match the consumer's consumption appetite on Digital and produce content and distribute it fast enough to match it.

Traditional media served in English and Hindi needs to adapt and provide content in local languages to users at a much higher pace.

To sum it up, the #goldfish phenomenon should not be a measure of what we do as marketers, especially not on #digital. The human attention span may not be 8 seconds and it may be 10 seconds or more, the important part is what catches a consumer's attention in these crucial 10 seconds. Marketers can use shortform and longform content. Content can be served episode wise or at one go but content continues to be king regardless of the medium. The human attention span is not a challenge but a wonderful opportunity for #brands as consumers go in Lean In mode when they go #Online on their mobile device.

Any thoughts, ideas, radical views and points of agreement and disagreement are welcome in the comments section below.