According to a four year study by the Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index (the OPA's IAI -- why is it associations crave acronyms?), the share of time that users spend with content online has increased 37% since 2003.
Some factors discussed in the findings:
- A more accessible, and much faster, Internet is driving increased overall time spent online.
- The increased popularity of video is leading to more time being spent with online content.
- The improvement in search allows consumers to more easily and quickly find the exact content they are looking for, increasing the likelihood they will engage more deeply with that content.
- The Web simply offers far more content than it did even four years ago, increasing content's share of time.
- The rise of instant messaging (IM) as a key communications tool has been a factor in communication's reduction in share of time. IM is a more efficient communications vehicle than email.
So while yesterday I made the point that the value of content ownership is falling -- surely serving content is the leading way to attract engagement and attention online.
I would like to learn more about the study -- how they separate content from communication (that line is definitely blurring with UGC) -- and it would be useful if the next study bifurcated traditional content from user-generated content.
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