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Watching for Signs of Land

View this Ipsos MediaCT presentation to hear our views on the important new "signs of land" we’re watching amid all the fraught in the Tech/Media marketplace.

In recent times it’s become fashionable to rhapsodize about how "everything is connected," with lots of attention lavished on emerging social media, "TV Everywhere," gaming as a new family "glue," linking shortened consumer attention spans to "the long tail," and the mobile device to – well – everything. However, in recent quarters, we’ve also had the opportunity to see the flipside of "pervasive connection" – across investment classes, economic sectors, country and regional economies – and to see how abrupt downshifts in consumer fortunes impact their purchasing mindsets and behaviors. The result so far is that, as Yankee Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra famously quipped, "the future ain't what it used to be."

As some halting signs of recovery from the Great Recession glimmer on the horizon, much about the future consumer landscape remains uncertain, particularly in the arena of media and technology. While it’s tempting to believe we’re in a realm of indefinite fluidity, logic and history suggest that probably isn’t the case – and in any event, there’s no great prize for being right in that assumption. On the other hand, only the most optimistic think that life 2-3 years from now will feel like life 2-3 years ago, in terms of what we can reasonably count on as the basis for planning. After years of feeling like they were playing offensive football, American marketers and consumers are getting used to the more wary perspective of the defensive team.

So what’s a reasonable "bet" to make about the next phase of the Tech/Media landscape? How about this: some elements will remain more fluid than others, and where "dry land" starts to emerge in select areas, important new connections will become apparent. While the future has always been notoriously hard to predict with precision, we at Ipsos MediaCT have seen a handful of newsworthy trends recently. This presentation offers more data and perspective on:

• The "Hulu home run" and what it implies about the emerging balance between choice and simplicity;
• The increased share-of-attention spent on gaming, even as spend has declined, and implications for balance-of-power in the gaming space;
• Updates from the evolving music marketplace that shed light on broader questions of content "monetization;"
• Pervasive and important differences, in basic consumer media consumption behaviors, between the U.S. western Europe, Japan, and the BRIC countries; and
• How these global differences are further accentuated when mobility is thrown into the mix.

As Yogi also famously said, "You can observe a lot by just watching," and it’s more important than ever to look for the elements of consumer preference and behavior that solidify in the "new normal" in which we’re all immersed.