The UK is becoming a nation where pushing a mouse around is becoming more of an obsession than that displayed by the cartoon cat in Tom and Jerry.
For new research has shown that on average we spend 23 hours a week online – the equivalent of 50 days per year. Unfortunately, figures for obese dogs, unkempt gardens and unfinished DIY projects are not available.
But perhaps the biggest surprise for many is that it’s men that spend the most time shopping on the web. Eighty seven per cent of men say they shop online, putting them just one per cent ahead of women.
What may be more enlightening is what men buy and how long they spend on this activity. According to other researchers, the male of the species has an offline shopping threshold of 90 minutes, less than half the time women will happily endure trailing round the high street. (And then presumably going back to the first store they were in to make the purchase)
According to yougov.com, Britons on average now devote:
• 7 hrs 54 mins to web browsing,
• 4 hrs 40 mins to online gaming,
• 3 hrs 26 mins managing their email,
• 2 hrs 23 mins watching online TV and video,
• 1 hr 53 mins shopping on the web,
• 1 hr 52 mins on internet phone calls
• and 1 hr 26 mins doing their online banking.
All of this activity consumes around 0.6 gigabytes of bandwidth, the equivalent of two to three gigs per month. The greater part of this bandwidth is used by streaming TV and video.
These statistics make interesting reading for business when it is taken into account that an average person spends around 19 hours per week watching TV. When advertisers are now taking out virtual hoardings and paying for product placement in console games, it does not take a great leap of imagination to see advertising following the eyeballs onto the internet more so than ever before.
Quite how and the extent to which broadband TV, streaming video, webcasts and podcasts will further upset the conventional dynamics of “advertising on TV” is still being debated. Furthermore, what the implications are for small to micro-sized companies has yet to fully crystallise.
For small to micro-sized companies, each penny spent on advertising has to see a return. In most cases, customers will be in a tight geographic area where traditional forms of advertising are tried and tested. But times change, an eye should be kept on all the options, including the internet. Many areas now have a multiplicity of dedicated web sites with a well defined location or subject as a focus. Advertising on these sites is worth investigating – and probably a good deal cheaper than the rates for adverts appearing in newsprint.
The trick is to know the sorts of web destinations your potential market is likely to congregate on and target them there. Certainly, the anecdotal experience of accommodation providers in the Highlands and Islands is that the bulk of their bookings now come from the web one way or another.
