What’s Your Digital Personality?

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Connected consumers are exhibiting completely new and revolutionary behaviors thanks to the digital era’s trends in social viewing, distracted viewing and viewing on demand. As a result, the media and entertainment industry is being forced to evolve – these consumers demand more than just the traditional content.

The availability of connected content has empowered consumers to expect instant access to the content in which they’re interested. It’s changing how traditional media is paid and consumed – including advertising – so meeting this demand for connected content is the key to growth for M&E providers.

To understand changing content consumption and digital adoption behaviors, IBM conducted a study of 3,800 adult consumers across the world. The “Beyond Digital” study found that age-based segmentation schemes no longer suffice in the connected consumer era and that M&E providers need to adopt new behavior-based segmentations.

Specifically, this survey revealed four prominent types of “digital personalities” that are not age-based, but instead are based on the combination of degree of access to content and the intensity of content interaction. These personalities are:

• Efficiency Experts: The largest group (41 percent of the global sample) sees the adoption of digital services as a way to make life easier. They send emails, use Facebook to communicate, access the Internet through mobile phones and buy items online.
• Content Kings: This digital personality (9 percent of the global sample) includes dedicated gamers, newshounds, movie buffs, music lovers and TV fans.
• Social Butterflies: These consumers (15 percent of the global sample) cannot imagine not being able to instantly access any of their friends. They maintain and update their social network profiles constantly, add tags to photos and watch videos from other users.
• Connected Maestros: They combine the common behaviors of Content Kings and Social Butterflies with other behaviors (35 percent of global sample). They use their smartphones or tablets to check news, sports scores, weather forecasts, or to access to games, music and videos.

Users and viewers can no longer be grouped simply because of age, gender or education. In fact, our digital habits put us in common with others who may have been considered within an opposite demographic before. And although this study is particularly focused on media and entertainment companies, these “digital personalities” and the information that the Internet provides can be adapted to other business.

The digital age has also evolved our behaviors toward traditional media. We still watch TV – but we do so while surfing the web from our mobile phone or tablet, thus diversifying our interests and forms of entertainment. The success of a television show is no longer measured exclusively by ratings, but also for its ability to become “buzzworthy” in the social sphere – like becoming a trending topic on Twitter, as we’ve seen with many reality shows. Further to this, the survey found that, contrary to what one might assume, these “second screeners” are more than just college students and younger 20-somethings. In fact, 65% of respondents aged 55 to 64 years said they surf the Internet while they are watching TV, and 49% of those over 65 also said they surf the Internet.

It’s important to note that while IBM classified these “digital personalities” as four separate groups, it’s possible for one person to fall into multiple categories. During the work day, some of us may be Efficiency Experts, while on the weekends we become Content Kings or even Connected Maestros. The connected consumer is very complex – which is why simply digitalizing content is not enough. M&E companies need to be more creative and innovative than ever before to connect with their target consumer.

Which digital personality do you fall under – are you one of the four listed here, a combination, or something totally unique? Which TV networks or shows do you think are doing the best job at diversifying their content for the connected consumer?

Image via IBM on flickr.