Americans spend an average of 21 minutes a day on Facebook,
according to a study released today by eMarketer. That’s one third of all the time
they spend in social media and takes up 6% of the time they spend on their
digital devices. For that
accomplishment, Mark Zuckerberg & Co. warrant nearly 10% of all digital ad
spending in the U.S.
But is Facebook overhyped in the marketing community? Perhaps, according to eMarketer, which points
out that video eats up 16% of people’s digital screen time—10 percentage points
more than Facebook—but merits only two points more share of ad dollars at
12%. Likewise, online radio grabs but 4%
of digital ad spend while accounting for 11% of digital attention.
The researcher predicts that Pandora will claim a larger portion of Americans’
digital day (7%) than Facebook in 2014,
but will have to settle for one seventh of the ad dollars with a share of only 1.4%.
There may be good reason for the discrepancies, however. The
eMarketer report qualifies that Facebook users are more focused on the content, where ads are hard to ignore. Pandora, meanwhile, is often background music in
which ads are easily tuned out, and video ads can be skipped or shortened.
