Choosing the right medium for communication has always been a critical step in the strategic planning process. Crafting communications to accommodate audiences’ tendencies to shift seamlessly from one medium to another, however, has never been a consideration.

Through casual observation, it has become obvious that people do switch fairly seamlessly between media these days. Thanks to research just out from Google, which worked with market analysts Ipsos and Sterling Brands, we have a much better understanding of the hows and whys. Armed with this information, communicators should be able to start strategizing for multiple-device communication.

Consider it another form of convergence. We’ve heard a lot lately about the convergence of earned, owned, paid and social media. We must also add to the mix the convergence of smartphones, TV, tablets and laptops/PCs.

Those four primary digital devices account for 90% of the media we consume, representing 4.4 hours every day, according to the study, which was designed to reveal how consumers routinely use multiple digital devices over a 24-hour period. That leaves only 10% of our media interactions for non-screen-based devices, notably newspapers, magazines and radio.

The study also found that people engage in two distinct behaviors:

• Sequential usage—People move between devices to accomplish tasks over time. For example, they’ll find a video on their smartphones, then finish watching it on their PC’s larger screen. People who engage in sequential usage almost always make the shift within the same 24-hour period. The most common activities associated with sequential usage include browsing, social networking, shopping and searching.


• Simultaneous usage—Known colloquially as the second screen, simultaneous usage means that people are using multiple devices at the same time. Most common among concurrent activities is the use of a smartphone with a television; 88% of people who used devices simultaneously had their phone in their hands while watching TV. Most of what we’re doing with the phone isn’t related to what we’re watching. We’re sending emails, for example, or accessing social media sites. But 22% of our simultaneous usage is complementary, where we’re accessing content directly related to what we’re watching.

While television represents the largest share of time spent consuming content—43 minutes per session—we’re using another device while watching television 77% of the time.

Communicators and marketers can glean some critical information out of the report:

The smartphone is the hub of our screen-based media consumption

While we may spend more time watching TV than using any of the three other screen-based devices, our smartphones have become “the backbone of our daily media use,” according to the study. Consider that the smartphone…

• Is the most common sidekick device used simultaneously with other screens
• Is the device that most frequently starts us on a sequential digital journey. That is, the majority of online tasks are initiated with something we’ve done on a smartphone, then continue on another device. The PC is the on-boarding device only for more complex tasks, such as planning travel or managing finances.
• Is the device we use most spontaneously. 80% of the time we use a smartphone, it’s spur-of-the-moment, whereas 48% of our use of a laptop/PC is for a planned activity. Eighty-one percent of shopping done on a smartphone is spontaneous.
• The smartphone is the one device that’s always with us, spreading out the places where we use it. The 38% of our daily media access that occurs on a smartphone covers use both at home and away from home. (Twenty-four percent of our access is on a laptop/PC, mostly at home and mostly to find information, stay current, and engage in task-focused, productivity-oriented work. Tablets account for only 9% of our daily screen-based media use, and the vast majority of that is entertainment-based, disconnected from work and removed from reality.)
• Is used most frequently in short bursts (17 minutes per session, compared to 30 minutes per session on tablets, 39 minutes on laptops/PCs and 43 minutes with the TV)

Context is king

Which device people use depends on the context in which they’re using it. Where are they? What do they want to accomplish? How much time do they have and how much time will it take? What’s the user’s state of mind?

Thirty-four percent of us use the device that’s closest to us when we’re looking for information. If we’re sitting at our desks, we’ll use the laptop/PC. If we’re on our couches or in bed, we may grab a tablet. Most other times, though, we’ll grab our phones.

Multiple screens lead to a sense of accomplishment

Getting things done is important to people. The perception that they got something done in previously unusable time is priceless. The use of smartphones in particular does lead to the sense of “found time,” as the report puts it—getting something accomplished ni “micro-moments.”

Search is the bridge between devices in sequential usage

When we’ve found something on the on-boarding device (usually our smartphone), we’ll search for it again on the next device in the sequence (usually a laptop/PC).

Television, the study found, is a major catalyst for search, usually on a smartphone. While watching a show, you’ll see something that interests you, grab the phone and search for the item to buy, the IMBD listing for that actor you recognized, background on the news story you’re watching.  Search ranked fourth among sequential activities (after browsing, social networking and shopping).

When it comes to shopping, search drives access to shopping content far more frequently on a mobile device than on a laptop/desktop.

Simultaneous device usage divides our attention

When we’re using multiple devices at the same time, we’re engaged in that oft-discussed activity of multi-tasking. As so many people have pointed out, multi-tasking is not the process of doing several things at the same time, but one of switching between different things deftly and quickly. So it is with simultaneous use of screen-based devices: our attention is split between distinct activities on each device, such as watching the game on TV while checking Facebook status updates on the phone.

The report offers several lessons worth weaving into your communications planning. One Google doesn’t offer, though, is that we need to plan strategically for multi-device communications. By understanding how our audiences use their various screens both simultaneously and sequentially, we can develop communication that works more effectively across each environment. While there’s no pressing need to re-cast all your communications for the smartphone, you should be thinking about the smartphone as the initial phase of a communication interaction. Think about the the smartphone will serve as the on-boarding device for content your audiences will finish consuming on some other medium (such as starting a shopping experience on the phone and completing it on a laptop/PC).

Among the other lessons Google offers:

• Let users save their progress on one device and pick it up on another
• Don’t limit conversion goals and calls-to-action to a single device where customers initially found your content
• Multi-device search campaigns will help customers connect their experience across multiple devices
• The importance of the second screen and TV viewing can’t be understated. Align your company’s TV strategy with other digital marketing strategies.
• Tailor the shopping experience to the channel, recognizing that many shopping experiences begin on a smartphone and end on a laptop/PC.

The full report is available here:

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