By breaking down online media consumption into its constituent parts and overlaying time, place, mood and motivation, this context matters research can potentially facilitate the planning process and allow for more impactful and contextually relevant brand communications by providing an extra layer of insight into internet usage.
Socialisation of the Web: 30% increase in unique users of social networks globally between November 2006 – August 2007
Media Owners: 9% of European online consumers regularly publish or update their own web pages online 1
The internet is a multi-dimensional platform allowing multiple needs to be fulfilled. As a result, people’s activities online are diverse, ranging from purchasing to streaming video to social networking. From an advertising perspective, this offers wide opportunities for building brands online but also presents more complex challenges. For example whilst the social environment of the internet raises opportunities for dialogue with highly networked audiences, it challenges the traditional content attached media planning model.
It was from this perspective that, Microsoft Advertising, embarked on an international research study, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of time spent online and the opportunities and challenges this presents to brand advertisers.
Our key objectives were:
- To delve beyond the “time spent” measure
- To identify and describe key online “occasions” and their contexts
- To examine advertising fit across these occasions
- To help our partners optimise their online media planning
MDAS collaborated with MEC Interaction to help inform our thinking and ensure the study met the current needs and questions from advertisers and their media agencies. We hope this research offers our partners valuable insights to help enhance their online media planning and stimulates the industry debate.
“If the marketing community ever needed evidence that online was much more than a simple response medium then this is it.
Good communication planning has always considered factors such as mindset, intention, and time. We now have the tools to apply those considerations to digital channels. Brands will ultimately benefit from this insight as they seek to build dialogue with consumers on their terms” .
Marc Bresseel, EMEA Regional Sales Director, Microsoft Advertising
Research Methodology:
The research was conducted by OTX in six markets: UK, France, Germany, Norway, Canada and Brazil over Summer 2007. There were 600 respondents in each country, aged between 16-54, and the research followed a three stage process:
- 24 hour diary: 400 respondents in each country were asked to diarise their online activities. In total there were 23,000 occasions and a total of 38,000 activities.
- Small qualitative exercise of 25 blogs to capture greater texture into people’s motivations and online journeys across the day.
- Advertising Questionnaire: A separate sample of 200 respondents
A summary of the findings is now available as a booklet. There is also a six-minute video.
Download the
Context Matters booklet or contact your Microsoft Account Manager to request hard copies.
