2016 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus

2015 was another transformative year in media, as TV and digital convergence accelerates and the longstanding consumer habits continue to be upended. While the media landscape is often described as growing increasingly ‘fragmented’, a more accurate description might be that it’s becoming increasingly interconnected, with consumers seamlessly accessing content across more screens than ever before. The lines between desktop, mobile, TV and film are beginning to blur as the various platforms are often more distinguished by differences in use case than by the underlying technology. As a result of this changing landscape, there are a new host of issues and solutions facing marketers and publishers, such as how to effectively advertise across these platforms and how consumers’ purchasing behavior is shifting over time.

Consider some of the key trends shaping the cross-platform media landscape in 2015 and what they suggest about the future. This was the year that:

• The TV landscape continued its shifting of time and space, with more delayed, on-demand and digital viewing of TV programming than ever before.
• Digital media usage continued to grow at a fast rate, driven by smartphone app usage which is inching closer and closer to 50 percent of all digital media time spent.
• Several traditional print publishers made huge gains with their digital audiences by making effective use of mobile to attract new readers and becoming more digitally-savvy operations.
• Digital got exceedingly close to becoming the largest advertising medium despite facing continued challenges such as viewability, invalid traffic (IVT) and the more recent issue of ad blocking.
• Consumers significantly accelerated their use of mobile devices for both shopping and purchase activity.

In this report, we will examine some of the most important sectors of the cross media ecosystem to show how the landscape has changed, who is leading the way, and what it all means for the year ahead – and beyond. It is an exciting time in the media industry, and we hope this exploration of today’s key issues helps put the Cross-Platform Future in Focus.