2. It's Where Consumers Are
According to the most recent data from the Center for the Digital Future (a part of USC's Annenberg School for Communication), American consumers are increasingly relying on the internet for their information needs:
- 78.6 percent of Americans use the internet
- Nearly two thirds of Americans are connected at home (more have it at work)
- More than 50 percent of Americans have been online for more than five years
- 48 percent of Americans have high-speed access at home (more have it at work)
That last bullet is a conservative estimate: it measures broadband penetration among all Americans. If you measure broadband penetration among internet-connected Americans, the percent goes way up... to as much as 95 percent among some populations like college students (according to comScore).
(If you want to hear more about the Center's Year Five data, listen to the podcast of an interview with Jeff Cole, the Center's director.)
But for movie marketers, perhaps the most important finding from the Center's Year Five report is that more and more often, internet users are going online without a specific task or destination in mind. That means consumers are using their computers to pass the time, as an entertainment vehicle itself, which suggests that they'll be more open to marketing messages about movies.
And if you don't believe that the internet is on the rise and television is on a slow decline, here's one telling sentence from the report: "If forced to give up a technology, internet users say that they would be more willing to relinquish their cell phones or television before they would give up the internet."
