Broadband might not change everything, but it changes an awful lot for communications and content service and application providers. For starters, broadband drives a tripling of user time spent online, says Nate Elliott, Jupiter Research senior analyst. That means users already spend more time online than with print media.
To the extent that service and application providers support their business models by advertising revenue, that means more revenue for Web sites and applications, less for print vehicles.
Where a typical user might spend three hours a week with print media, users in western Europe routinely spend four hours a week online. But there’s a huge difference. About two thirds of users who are 65 or older spend more than five hours a week with print media. Users between 15 and 24 are more than 400 percent less likely to do so.
By some recent measures, user involvement with content sites has eclipsed use of the Internet for communications. At least, that’s what the Online Publishers Association says.
Jupiter analysts say that does not mean “news” is dead, or that newspapers are necessarily dead, yet. News is the top type of online content, and users are 300 percent more likely to consume news than sports or video content. And rates of consumption of print haven’t changed in four years, Jupiter says.
Without a doubt, online video consumption is getting to be quite mainstream. Last year, 22 percent of Americans and 11 percent of Europeans reported watching video regularly, with 18 percent of French respondents saying they do so regularly, says Jupiter.
Overall, the video audience has doubled since 2003, and Jupiter estimates viewership will double again by 2011.
But something might have happened over the last year. A recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project found that 57 percent of all Internet users, and 57 percent of users between 30 and 49, have watched online video. In the oldest age demographic, 39 percent have watched an online video.
Possibly 10 to 18 percent of older users report watching video every day, the Pew research finds.
About a quarter of younger users between 15 and 24 say they watch online video regularly and are more than 12 times more likely to watch video as users who are 55 or older. That doesn’t necessarily mean those viewers have substituted online video for legacy TV, though, as reported TV watching hasn’t changed.
The intensity of involvement might be questionable, however. About 27 percent of users say they regularly multitask, using multiple media at once.
And while some surveys suggest communication activities are decreasing, Jupiter researchers say users “spend most of their online time communicating.” Compared to dial-up users, broadband users are 57 percent more likely to use email regularly, 147 percent more likely to use instant messaging regularly and are 125 percent more likely to blog.
More than 10 percent of European users visit social networks regularly and more than 40 percent visit such sites daily. In the U.S. market, use of social networking sites is spreading to older age groups. About 35 percent of social network users are between the ages of 35 and 54.
The thing about social networks is that they are in many ways substitutes for other activities such as email, instant messaging, texting, calling or entertainment sites and applications.
And while most new online activities are disproportionately engaged in by younger users, just about every new type of activity is being adopted by older users as well.
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