Everywhere media professionals turn, research companies are publishing studies overstating American consumption of offline media. How long will this continue?

During the course of one's lifetime, there are plenty of instances when assertions are made and backed up with plenty of evidence, yet our instincts and our common sense tells us there's no possible way they could be true. As I'm getting older and more seasoned in this business of ours, I'm learning to trust my instincts a bit more.

One of the assertions I think is highly suspect is this notion that the average American sits around watching television upwards of 26 hours per week. To me, it's ridiculous on its face that the average folks you meet every day would have nothing to do with their lives other than sit in front of the TV for vast expanses of time.

It gets more ridiculous when you start doing the math. Spending 26 hours a week watching television means spending more than three and a half hours per day on average. Your typical American tends to have a job, classes to attend or something happening during the course of the day that generally prohibits spending more than three and a half hours a day on pretty much anything.

We're always reading about how busy the average American is, and even if you allow a generous two hours out of every day to sit in front of the TV, you'd still have to spend eight hours a day on both days of the weekend staring at the tube to reach that number. And remember, 26 hours is supposed to be an average, not an upper bound.

In the media business, these ridiculously inflated numbers tend to perpetuate themselves. Many times they're published by companies with an agenda. They also tend toward using surrogates for the information we're really interested in. Maybe they rely on surveys for consumption data, or they look to the length of time a television is left on during the course of the day and make assumptions from there.  However the method and the number that comes out of the process appears to be ridiculous on its face.

Yes, I realize I'm not accounting for simultaneous consumption or multitasking here. But when one opens that can of worms, we quickly come to the realization that even doing something passive like watching television requires some base level of minimal effort in order for a meaningful level of communication to take place. 

When we're distracted by a ringing phone, take a bathroom break or tell the kids to go to bed, we take our attention away from the TV to some degree. This highlights the notion that what we're really looking for as advertisers is not how much time people spend with a particular medium, but how much time they're spending paying attention. Ultimately, we'd like to see whether people are paying attention to the ads, and even with commercial-level data, television really doesn't provide that level of understanding, does it?

If television can't provide any meaningful observed data on engagement, it's because it's a passive medium. In other words, because people don't really interact with a television much other than to turn it on and off, change channels and skip commercials, there's nothing from a data standpoint that gives advertisers guidance about how much people are paying attention to television commercials.

We can sometimes tell when they're not paying attention, but we don't get much in the way of meaningful data that support the notion of paying attention to commercials.

Online advertising's nature as an active medium does provide this, however. With advanced metrics on Flash and rich media advertising, we can understand how long an ad displayed on a user's screen fully within view, or how much time was spent interacting with an ad. Couple this with all the direct response metrics we're able to get from online media and it's clear that online has a distinct advantage over passive media in the engagement measurement department.

We may never be able to develop an industry-accepted definition of what engagement is, precisely, but the important thing is that we've got the data from which a definition may eventually be composed. Even if every advertiser decides to define engagement differently, these data will give us a window that provides visibility into the engagement question.

For my money, research companies can make it seem as if everybody in America spends every hour of leisure time sitting in front of their televisions. It won't matter how much time is spent with a medium. But what will matter is how effective a medium is at communicating a message, and online media can do a superior job at gauging that effectiveness because it's an active medium rather than a passive one. 

Activity implies intent, which in turn implies interest.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com. Read full bio.