Anyone who shares their Netflix account or any other VoD platform with their family knows this. Each member of the family has specific preferences on how to view the content and where to view it. There are those who always end up in front of the television to be able to see the contents, but also those who prefer to do it from their tablet. And to that we must add that access to content itself changes.
We are adapting it to the specific needs of each moment. You may not hate anything more than watching content on your smartphone screen, but if that is what will allow you not to get bored to death on a train or plane trip, you will end up doing it. Therefore, the final analysis WARC not so surprising.
According to its conclusions, which are based on data from a study carried out by Magnite, two out of every three European viewers are multi-device in their access to content. The higher the income of the European household in question analyzed, the more likely it is that more types of devices are used to access content.
In addition, the study is based on specific data from five European countries to establish its conclusions, which allows us to understand things also in the concrete. One of the countries analyzed is Spain.
Spain is the second country in which a higher percentage of television viewers access their streaming content on a single device. They are 32%, only surpassed by 36% of France. Spain is, yes, with 28% the country in which fewer consumers see them in two. 40% access this content on three or more devices, something that only exceeds the 43% that both the United Kingdom and Italy have.
What this entails
The data in this study is a striking curiosity, but also a crucial piece of information for marketers and one that tells them that the future is going to be complicated. This fragmentation of audiences between devices and the fact that they jump from one to another makes it increasingly difficult to measure audiences. Determining who is who and what is watching is as devices are added to the equation and more complex jumps between them.
To determine the success or failure of the content, this complicates things, but it also does it to sell and buy advertising in those services that have it. And as more and more ad-supported services appear and the market seems more receptive to that format, the problem will increasingly become one of the complicating factors in the online advertising market.
Marketers will not only have to navigate the tricky waters of a new environment, but also one in which measuring things is more difficult than in traditional settings. The industry is aware of the situation: instead of measuring audiences, they are preparing to drive metrics linked to attention. If you can’t measure the backlog of people who see it, you may have to focus on how they see it and how much time they spend on it.
