TV watching no longer the top priority for consumers: Study

A new IBM survey on consumer behavior in the digital age has opined that there is a mismatch between the time alloted for Internet surfing and the time alloted for watching television.

New York, Aug.23 : A new IBM survey on consumer behavior in the digital age has opined that there is a mismatch between the time alloted for Internet surfing and the time alloted for watching television.

According to the study reported by the Hollywood Reporter, people also seem to favour mobile content and are on the lookout for more traditional forms of entertainment on their mobile sets than was previously thought.

Among the key lessons recommended for studios is to make your content available everywhere, but don't expect to get paid for every platform.

The survey is set to be released in the fall, and it showed that consumers are divided over their preferences for free online content with ads or subscription fee-based content without commercials.

About a third are for free content, but about 20 percent are willing to pay for the HBO-style model, according to IBM.

In the latest sign of television's decline as the primary media device, 19 percent of the respondents said they spend six hours or more each day on personal Internet usage, whereas on eight percent said they spend that amount of time watching television.

One to four hours of TV usage was reported by 66 percent, compared with 60 percent for the Web.

"The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source," said Saul Berman, IBN Media and Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader.

According to the survey, watching video content on the Web is a popular activity these days, and, the most popular destinations are user content-generated sites like YouTube(39 percent), TV network sites (33 percent ), search engines (32 percent) and social-networking sites (28 percent).

As far as mobile video is concerned, an average of 35 percent surveyed globally by IBM said they have or want to watch mobile video. Seven percent report having a video-content subscription for their mobile phones. Nearly a third of U.K. users said their mobile consumption ate in their TV viewing time, according to IBM.

The online survey was conducted between mid-April and mid-June by the IBM Institute for Business Value and generated 885 responses in the U.S., 559 in the U.K., 378 in Japan, 338 in Germany and 263 in Australia.

ANI