How much time does a person spend on Internet and watching TV? how will it influence advertising?

Number of hours people spend on Internet

Data source: Digital Future report 2004, by Jeffrey I. Cole, Ph.D., University of California.

Number of hours people watch TV

HOURS/PERSON/YEAR        1998  1999  2000  2001  2002  2003  
Total Mdia Usage        3,347 3,469 3,519 3,570 3,623 3,661 
Television              1,551 1,588 1,640 1,661 1,661 1,656 
 Broadcast TV             884   867   865   815   810   798 
  -Network stations       710   706   805   753   749   736 
  -Independent stations   174   162    61    62    61    61 
 Cable & satellite TV     667   720   774   846   851   858 
  -Basic                  565   617   638   692   698   706 
  -Premium                101   103   137   154   153   152 

Data Resource: FCC Annual Report 2003.

From the first figure we can see that the time people spend on Internet grew from 9.4 hours/week to 12.5 hours/week, a rise of 30%. And the time people spend on watich TV grew from 3519 hours/year to 3661 hours/year, that is 67.5 hours/week to 70.2 hours/week, a rise of 4%.

A reaserch made by the PRWEB company in 2006 shows that 55% of the online population uses the internet to search for local products and information in US. Source:http://www.wsicorporate.com/images/upload/211_StateoftheClickpr.pdf

We can see that till the year 2003, althrough internet usage is still grow at a high rate, but people still spend 57.7 hours more on TV, and there is no trend that this people will spend less time on TV now. In the newest release on March 07, 2006 of FCC's 12th annual report on TV competition, FCC declear that the death of TV hasn't quite happened yet as the average american household watched 8 hours and 11 minutes of TV per day last year. This was an all time record. The average american person in the average amercan household watched 4 hours and 32 minutes, another all time record.

A personal statics number shows that advertisement consist around 30% of total broadcasting time. http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/commerciallength.htm

Another news is that more and more people now get used to record TV programs, by which mean they can very easily skip all the advertisements. New products like Harddisk recorder, DVD recorder is becoming more and more popular.

From the consumer side, we can conclude that people are spending more time on Internet, people use Internet to search product information. The opportunity for online advertising is still growing. There is no trend that TV advertising will die, but there are certain threats like DVD recorders.