Saturday, January 14, 2012

Using, Watching, and Surfing

I'm disappointed that notion persists among marketers that people "surf" the Internet - it's a term that never did set well with me, sloppily borrowed from another medium (television) at a time when the Internet was too new to understand, and largely inaccurate to the behavior of users in the wild. As such, a likely reason that advertising remains woefully ineffective on the Internet is that tactics are based on the premise that the person the marketer intends to reach is surfing the Internet rather than using it. To my way of thinking, the two are different behaviors and require different tactics.

Consider the medium from which the notion of "surfing" is borrowed; there are instances in which a person is channel surfing: they are bored, turn on the television, and switch from channel to channel watching bits and pieces of video out of context, in a state where an advertisement is no different to a program - it's just a scrap that might be interesting.

I don't dispute that television is used in this manner at some times. But most often, a person watches television - a distinctly different thing from channel-surfing. They turn on the television at a certain time with the intent of giving their attention to a specific program (or turn on the DVR to watch something they have recorded) and, for the duration of the program, they focus their attention on the program. In this state of mind, advertisements are an unwanted distraction: the viewer may chat with others of the room, or even wander out of the room to refill their drink or recycle the last one. For DVR, they fast-forward past advertising to return to the program they intended to watch (though I understand there is some evidence that users who FF commercials on DVR are actually giving attention to them, if only to know when the program has resumed).

And in "watching" mode, advertising is far less likely to get attention. No matter how interesting, clever, or even relevant a commercial message might be, the user is not interested in it - it's a distraction from what they are intending to give attention to at the moment.

Regarding the Internet medium, my sense is that the behaviors are equivalent. In some instance, a person is merely bored and clicks about from site to site, looking for momentary distractions, and is as susceptible to advertising messages as they are to editorial content. Even in that state, it's not entirely analogous to channel-surfing on television, as it involves more decision-making than pressing the "next channel" button to jump from one site to another.

However, in many instances - possibly "most" instances - there is an entirely different user behavior, and I expect it is far more likely for the Internet than for television. The user is intent on giving their attention to a specific task or consuming specific content, which galvanizes them against distractions. People go onto the Internet to check the weather, balance their checkbook, exchange messages with friends, etc. There are breaks between tasks, but when a user is in pursuit of a specific goal, advertising is less likely to get attention.

In both surveys and observational studies, the "surfing" behavior is extremely rare. There are a few exceptions, studies that indicate people spend the majority of their time "just surfing," but I tend to wonder about the methodology (if you interrupt someone in a shopping mall, they will give a convenient answer that is most likely to end the encounter) and instrumentation (a poorly-worded question leads to inaccurate results). I don't entirely discount the possibility, but remain incredulous where details are withheld. Given that the most common uses of the Internet involve task-flows rather than listlessly clicking about to chance upon something interesting, I expect surfing to be a rare behavior.

And to the point: the dismal response rates of online advertising seem entirely justified, all the more so when a particular format or message is geared to "surfing" behavior rather than "using" or "watching" behavior - and so long as marketers and advertisers continue to formulate tactics based on a state of mind and behavior that is not accurate or factual, their tactics will continue to fail.

2 comments:

  1. In digital advertising that phenomenon is colloquially referred to as banner blindness. Advertisers are well aware of it. That 728x90 or 300x250 they spent $10k to develop and $100k in media for goes almost entirely unseen by the public. It results in CTRs of .05% which is itself inflated since the majority of click-throughs are mis-clicks.

    There's a real struggle in the digital advertising space to legitimize the money that's required to get the same number of eyeballs to see an ad as is generally taken for granted in traditional (tv) spaces. All eyeballs aren't equal.

    While your argument about surfing and blindness to tv adverts is accurate there's the larger dimension (and more important to brand) of emotional connection. Assuming blindness happens equally across all mediums, TV still holds the ace in terms of emotional impact and lingering effect.

    Do not underestimate the value of the :30 laugh/puzzle/tear jerk. As many brands have proven, a great emotional connection can be made in such a space. No such opportunity exists in a purely interactive form (ignoring video interstitials). Banners, homepage takeovers and other 'purely' digital forms of advertising have yet to mature into a form that resonates with the viewer.

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  2. Thanks for commenting - and you make an excellent point about the way in which Internet advertisers have failed to connect with their audiences the way that traditional advertising does - particularly in the video medium, which provides a rich experience. That's definitely a point to ponder.

    It seems a bit oblique to the idea, or perhaps my own consideration was a bit meandering, as merely getting attention of a person whose mental focus is on accomplishing a specific goal, from which promotional messaging is an unwelcome distraction, is prerequisite to making a deeper emotional connection.

    Though, in fairness, television advertising is definitely an unwelcome distraction, my sense is that consumers expect and to some degree tolerate these interruptions in that channel (at least those without DVR technology). There's much to be learned from older channels, but my sense is that the way in which consumers "use" a television is considerably different to the way they use the Internet - and considering this difference is critical.

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