May 10, 2011

Forbes: Okay, We've Killed Our Television. Now What?

This Forbes article mentions how important mobile is today, as Nielsen data now shows that fewer Americans own TV sets.
If you are not taking mobile into account you might as well hang it up.

People may have begun watching online videos on their desktops or laptops but a lot of that content is being consumed on handhelds now.

The kicker is that, for right now at least, consumers seem to remember these ads more if they see them on a mobile screen than if they have seen them on the television. There are a lot of reasons that might explain that – we’ve grown accustomed to tuning out commercials or have the technology to skip over them. Also, by its personal nature – you are holding the device, after all in your hand, mobile videos are just more engaging.

A study commissions by Apple and executed by Nielsen hints at this. Reported by Apple Insider earlier this year, the study found that  iAd viewers were twice as likely to recall seeing the ad, three times as likely to remember its message and five times as likely to remember the brand compared viewers who saw it on TV.

This is a drum mobile ad providers have been beating for a while and no doubt will continue to do so  – that is, their ads pick up where TV leaves off or, in the case of Nielsen’s vanishing TV watchers, drops off.
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