New report shows the Web hits another major milestone

For all the hype around the Internet and its ubiquitous nature, good old-fashioned TV always reigned supreme when it came to killing time. For years, the average American (and who, exactly,  is that?) would carve out 12-13 hours out of every week and hand it over to the "drug of the nation." No other mind-numbing past time came close.

That is, of course, until this year.

According to Forrester's annual survey of 30,000 U.S. consumers, "Understanding The Changing Needs Of The US Online Consumer, 2010" published on Monday, the average American, for the first time in its couch-potato existence, spends as much time online as watching TV offline—roughly about 13 hours a week.

Some might be quick to explain this increase in the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. However, only 35% of people use social networking sites (which is up from 17% in 2007). More specifically, another study came out by the Pew Institute that showed only 8% of adult American actually use Twitter.

What is truly amazing about this is that TV usage hasn't fallen to create this extra time to surf the Web. In fact, channel surfing is up about 5% in the last five years. However, Web surfing is up an astonishing (or maybe not) 121% in that same amount of time. It is important to note that this increase is not exclusively surfing the Web via a browser. On the contrary, a large majority of the time included in this report was devoted to email, which 92% of people use. 60% of people shop online (the second most popular Web activity after email).

So if Internet usage is up and TV usage is up, where are people finding the extra time? They are taking time away from other activities. For example, radio usage over the last 5 years has dropped by 15%. Magazine readership is down 18% (coincidentally 18% of the people surveyed read blogs regularly). And the newspaper industry is bearing the brunt of the exodus with a 26% drop in readership over the last 5 years.

So what does this mean from a marketing perspective? Well, it shows that online is as important as ever and growing in importance everyday when it comes to connecting to consumers. It also shows that although the big three networks have seen their share of revenue dips, TV in general is healthier than ever. In fact, one could argue that online advertising owns a great deal to cable TV in that cable paved the way for the type of market segmentation and demographic focus that is the backbone of Web marketing.

There will be a time in the not too distant future where people reading newspapers or simply listening to the radio will seem odd, much like someone who still uses a rotary dial phone today. But take heart, all these changes mean that we can regale our grandkids with stories of having just three main channels of TV (plus a couple UHF ones). Or how ink would stain our fingers from reading news that was delivered on actual paper. That is if our grandkids can peel their eyes from the holographic, 3D real-time virtual reality worlds and actually want to listen.

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston Office.

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