Surprise, Surprise

Madison Avenue, directly or indirectly, allocates nearly a trillion dollars in advertising budgets to influence consumers via media, but how much does the personal media habits and interests of industry pros influence the media they use to do that? It’s an old question that it taking on new impetus in the age of hyper accelerated digital media change, and some new research indicates that the personal media habits of industry pros isn’t anything like that of the consumers they are charged with influencing.

The research, which was presented by the Media Behavior Institute last Thursday night during MPG’s Collaborative Alliance session during Advertising Week, indicates that media pros are much more likely to be heavy users of digital media – particularly mobile and social – and are much less likely to use traditional media such as TV and radio than average consumers.

The study, which utilized a mobile app-based diary that a small, non-projectable sample of industry executives used to self-report their media usage during one day in their working life, compared their behavior with MBI’s ongoing USA TouchPoints study, which captures the same daily usage data among the general consumer population for 10-day periods.

                                                               (chart from Inside Radio)

While the data is based on a small sample, the findings are striking, because the media pros reporting were so dramatically different than average consumers, especially when it came to their use of Internet-connected computers and mobile devices.

Just ask anyone in your sales department.  This info will come as nothing new.

I'd add more, but I can't top the comments at the bottom of the Mediapost article:

• Don Seaman from TVB:  "It also would explain the industry's obsession with "Mad Men"..." 
• Doug Garnett from Atomic Direct :  "For all the talk of informed strategy, far too many ad agency decisions are based on personal preference and neighborly anecdote. This is good data for provoking thought. It also explains the ad biz obsession with digital - resulting in spending that far outpaces it's effectiveness." 
• Domenico Tassone from The Encima Group, Inc. "It's called the echo chamber."