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New data from our digital media & technology tracker the Essential Eye (June 2012) shows just how many UK adults are now using second screens while watching TV. Some examples are shown below.
Of those doing any form of ‘dual screening’ while watching TV in the past week, we also ask what they did. Nearly 1 in 5 now say they looked up information that was relevant to the TV show they were watching. And a remarkable 1 in 6 say they looked up information that was related to a TV ad they saw. (This is even higher among tablet owners.)
You can find out more about the Essential Eye by dropping me a line.
Stuart
YouView finally launched yesterday, with a successful consumer trial now largely completed. The YouView team have decided to focus heavily on the innovative ‘backward EPG’ which will introduce catch-up TV to more living rooms in the UK.
When we first conducted an industry-wide VOD study a few years ago, we predicted that VOD would eventually migrate to the TV screen, ideally with EPG integration. But back then, TV VOD was only available to a small proportion of UK homes, predominantly via Virgin Media’s TV Catchup service.
But now the UK has reached a TV VOD tipping point. New data from our digital media tracker The Essential Eye shows that 51% of UK homes now has access to VOD on the TV screen, either through their set top box, or through OTT services from the likes of XBox Live and the Playstation Network.
YouView is entering a UK living room environment that is radically different to what it was a couple of years ago. And Google TV is only a few weeks behind. TV providers may not welcome the new competition, but for viewers the choice is greater than ever before.
Our digital media & technology tracker, the Essential Eye, plots a variety of devices on a scale from ‘just a lot of hype’ to ‘must have’.
So which are the UK’s ‘must-have’ devices? Predictably, it’s the iPhone and iPad at the top of the pile. But the Kindle and the Virgin TiVo box are next on the list.
If you want to find out more about the Essential Eye and what it can tell your business, give us a shout.
Technical note: Question asked for each device based on those aware of or owning the device. Figures in this analysis have been re-percentaged on the total sample, i.e. adults aged 16+.
Just pulled together a new Slideshare presentation combining Essential Eye data with a general synthesis of digital consumer trends from the last year or so. So here it is. If you’d liketo get your hands on the Essential Eye, just give me a shout.
And here’s another nugget of insight from the Essential Eye. 8 in 10 Virgin Media customers who watched catch-up TV last week did so through their TV screen.
Why is this important?
Of course consumers use PCs and laptops to watch TV programmes. But generally for specific programmes that were missed on TV, in relatively low volumes each week.
But we always felt that mainstream audiences wanted to watch catchup TV programmes on the TV screen. These latest figures prove that when they can, they do.
New data from our Essential Eye tracker shows that iPad owners are twice as likely as non tablet owners to look up relevant information while watching TV. We knew that tablets were being used regularly in the living room, while the TV was on, but this is the first time we’ve seen how much more they drive interaction with the TV content itself.
The latest data from the Essential Eye is now here, and some of it is too exciting to keep to ourselves, so we’ll be drip-feeding you with insight over the next few weeks.
Here’s an appetizer: we asked mobile phone owners what they could do on their phones and what they’d like to be able to do (if they couldn’t already.)
Here are the Top 10 things they said they wanted to do: (‘I can’t do this, but I’d like to’, Essential Eye, March 2012.)
- Recognise things through the camera (e.g. pictures) and tell me what they are (23%)
- Pay for things by swiping my phone on a scanner (21%)
- Find my location using GPS (21%)
- Scan bar codes and use it to bring up information (21%)
- Give me directions to where I want to go (20%)
- Make cashless payments in a shop for things costing less than £15 (20%)
- Translate things from one language to another (20%)
- Give me directions to where I want to go (20%)
- Recognise a song and tell me what it is (19%)
- Receive promotions or vouchers to save money at places close to where I am (18%)
Conclusions:
- There’s a bright future for M:Commerce and cashless payments.
- Simple utility appeals to the next wave of smartphone adopters more than mobile internet / email / social media (we’ve heard that before somewhere) Mobile networks and handset manufacturers should focus on these benefits to drive the next wave of smartphone adoption.
- Shazam should be very excited.
More soon.
S
Today we’re very proud and happy to launch the Essential Eye – our new tracking study of 3,000 UK adults per quarter that reveals how audiences are using new media technology and importantly, what they are using it for.
It paints a comprehensive picture of your target audience: what they’ve got, how they’re using it, what they see as beneficial and how they are changing their media consumption.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing all sorts of Essential Eye insights, but in the meantime you can get a quick overview here.
Stuart
Essential_Eye_Press_Release
Thought I’d import my post on this topic from my own blog. We’re all about storytelling at Essential Research, and this is why:
Insight and the Art of Storytelling
Incidentally, we’ve been running freebie storytelling training for our clients recently. So if you’re one of our clients (or think you might be soon) and fancy some free storytelling training, give us a shout.
Interesting article here on the evolution of the TV remote control. “The remote control will change more in the next three years than it has in the previous six decades.” It’s exciting and rather terrifying in equal measures. As ever though, there’s a danger of forgetting the people who really matter in all of this – the average consumer – for whom even today’s remote controls can inspire terror.
It’s also interesting that there’s so little reference to smartphones in this. The new Google TV interface can be controlled by an Android smartphone; the iPhone works very nicely as an Apple TV controller and allows us to set our Sky+ box from afar. We increasingly rely on our smartphones to control many of the other things that matter in our life. Isn’t it a logical next step – if only to reduce some of the clutter on our coffee tables? Discuss.
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