Media spend down but consumption is up, says report

The second KPMG Media and Entertainment Barometer, revealed that the average spend on traditional media fell from £9.19 in September 2009 to £7.46 in March 2010 and spend on digital media halved from £1.99 to £0.98 in the same period.

Consumers are increasingly expecting free news content both online and offline as 21% of newspaper readers paid nothing for the media during the past month, compared with 15% six months ago, reflecting the uptake of free newspapers.

People accessing news content online increased from 84% to 88% and only 10% of non-subscribers would consider becoming paid subscribers to media products in the coming year.

The KPMG survey found that younger consumers, aged 16-24 are more likely to pay for online content than their older counterparts.

It also found that people were more prepared to pay for music (55%) and film (45%) than they were to pay for TV (30%) and online newspapers or magazines (31%).

The average monthly consumption of traditional media including watching television and reading newspapers rose from 11 hrs 40 minutes to 12 hours 13 minutes.
Digital media consumption increased more dramatically from 6 hours 14 minutes to 7 hours 28 minutes.

KPMG says the results ” highlight the scale of the challenge the media industry faces in halting declining revenues”.

The six-monthly Barometer was carried out by YouGov, which surveyed online and offline media consumption across publishing, broadcast, music and gaming of over 1000 UK consumers.

David Elms, head of media at KPMG UK, says the majority of consumers (43%) prefer traditional media over digital (25%) and so “creating integrated business models which make the most of both traditional and digital business models is therefore key for the sector.”