The Future of Television (isn’t really so different after all)

Video consumption has fundamentally changed. We know this to be true. More and more eyeballs are moving to non-traditional consumption devices like mobile phones. Time spent with digital video is up 52% YoY, while time spent with television is down 6% in that same time frame. On YouTube alone, watch time is up 50% YoY (keep in mind this is off a huge base — YouTube is the #1 site for video consumption on the internet by a large margin), while watch time on mobile devices is up 100%!

These are truly transformative times, but when we think more critically about how users are consuming video content the “television” is still an incredibly valuable platform.

Think about it historically. Since the advent of programming on TV up until the mid-aughts, user behavior didn’t really change. I didn’t engage with television content as a child in the mid-1990s any different than my parents did in the 1960s. We’d plop down in front of the TV and hopefully find something to watch. If not, we’d change the channels until we did. Sure, I had more options available to me, but the fundamental concept didn’t really change.

Today? We have a world of content at our fingertips (literally). I can pull out my phone and load YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc. and find something engaging to watch in a matter of moments. If I get bored or need to do something else, I just pause whatever I’m doing and come back to it later. Simple.

Back to the television. The previous paragraph in a vacuum would indicate that the TV will go the way of the 8-Track and HD-DVD, but in reality that’s not the case. We’re actually not spending much less time with our actual televisions, we’re just engaging with them differently, and I would argue more directly. With streaming media devices like the Chromecast, Apple TV, and Roku and smart TVs that connect to the internet, our televisions become extensions of our mobile phones. You can start an episode of your favorite show on your commute home, then cast it to your TV once you walk in the door. No more flipping through the channels to find something to watch.

The implications here are wide-ranging, but one area that I find fascinating is the impact this behavior has for marketers. In the past, a company would run a :30 commercial aligned against premium content and hope they were reaching their eyeballs. Of course, there was no guarantee people didn’t just change the channel once the commercials started. Today? If I’m casting a show on Hulu or watching a video on YouTube on my TV, I’m actively choosing to engage with that content. If an advertiser opts to run ads against that content, I’m actively engaged and even more, I don’t have the option to just change the channel.

This is a fundamental shift from the way advertising has traditionally worked, and it’s hard to argue it isn’t for the better. Instead of hoping their ads are being seen and a remote control isn’t within reach, marketers today have much stronger assurances that their messages are being seen and heard.

Now, the implication for cable companies and the traditional television consumption model? I’ll leave that for another day.