Media consumption is now taking place across a wider array of devices and channels. A person’s attention is omnichannel, and smart marketers are adjusting plans to this new reality.

Even though media has long been transacted and measured separately by channel, marketers need to think holistically about media investments as well as their own operations. Everyone in the value chain, from creatives to buyers to technology and measurement, faces pressure to become proficient in multiple channels at once. At a high level, the drive to break down silos makes sense.

It would be a mistake, however, to pursue this rush to omnichannel at the expense of the key role played by channel specialists. Media convergence does require new systems and processes, but it doesn’t render decades of institutional know-how obsolete. There are excellent specialists across the industry, and convergence does not require them to forego their specialization and become jacks of all trades. That would be foolish. Rather, it is a question of finding new ways for specialists to communicate and collaborate with one another, and providing them with the tools to make it a seamless transition.

Agree on Common KPIs at the Outset

One of the first ways to do that is at the pre-planning process, uniting all stakeholders at the outset around a set of universal KPIs. Individual media channels have different nomenclatures and diverse standards for success; one may view performance as engagement, another as view-through, another as conversion. Omnichannel requires that they all eventually resolve into a universal understanding of media performance.

Today, that work of resolution takes place once the campaign is done, and after channel specialists have optimized against their channel-specific KPIs. But there’s no need to wait until the campaign is finished. Engage channel specialists early and tap their understanding of how their efforts contribute toward that universal KPI.

Continue to Innovate Within Channels and Apply Insights  Across Channels

Operating across channels does not obviate the need to continue innovating and optimizing within individual channels. There are real differences between, say, linear TV and digital video, and while both must act in concert as never before, there are still methods and techniques unique to each one. TV buyers might become proficient in negotiating deals with networks, in spotting attractive inventory on the spot markets, advocating for pod placement, or in optimizing creative for the big screen. By the same token, digital video specialists will be more adept at navigating the much more diverse landscape of inventory, searching for higher-performing, brand-safe opportunities that may be measured by engagement instead of view through. These skills are not pitted against one another as they converge into a single omnichannel reality. On the contrary, they become more cross-functional and translatable. Specialists have a lot to teach one other.

Help the Sell-Side Break Down Its Silos

Marketers aren’t alone in facing the omnichannel imperative. Sellers are also under the same pressure, and face similar challenges in overcoming old habits of thinking of channels in silos.

The demand to be omnichannel is, at this moment, most acutely being felt by the agency and marketer. Sellers know they need to catch up, and many of the largest networks have. But there are still many other sellers who know that they've only been selling their own thing, and that they’re too specialized to a specific channel or property.

Brands and agencies will play a critical role in helping to bring more sellers along into this omnichannel world. It may not be a matter of selling more diverse inventory, more formats or more channels, but simply understanding how their inventory contributes alongside other types to achieve those universal KPIs.

Forget Absolutes and Focus on Practical Next Steps

The omnichannel imperative is real - and urgent - but it does not mean the end of channel specialists or specialization. Breaking down silos has become a common cause for the industry, but it is in many ways an ill-suited metaphor to the true task at hand. The convergence of media does not ask us to view digital marketing as a monolith, and to think so would be to ignore the wealth of intelligence and know-how that has gotten us to this point. It’s not a question of breaking down silos as much as building bridges and tunnels between them.

On the contrary, channel expertise will be more essential than ever before. Rather than meld them all together, it’s a matter of ensuring that expertise is communicated, socialized, and leveraged more collaboratively. Supported by technology with the right connectivity and power, omnichannel can liberate experts to do what they do best. ■

Thanks to increased multitasking, American are now consuming media for more than 12 hours per day, with nearly half that time spent on digital platforms, according an eMarketer report published Oct. 9.

“U.S. Time Spent With Media: eMarketer’s Updated Estimates for 2017” calculates that U.S. adults will spend 12 hours and 1 minute daily with major media this year, with TV viewing accounting for only 3 hours 58 minutes of the total. The total media time per person (over age 18) in 2017 is two minutes per day higher than in 2016 and 24 minutes more than in 2012, according to the study.

The growing use of mobile devices represents more than one-quarter of total media time, according to the research group, which observed that "people have become more efficient at multitasking."

Related: Study: 85% of Internet Users Surf While Watching TV

eMarketer's methodology tallies the minutes of use, no matter whether a person is focused on one platform or is simultaneously using multiple devices. Its analysis concluded that "total media consumption time continues to grow, even as the number of hours in a day remains the same."

In the "digital" category, American spend 3 hours 17 minutes on mobile devices (not including voice conversations); two hours, 3 minutes on desktops and laptops; and 31 minutes on "other connected devices," such as tablets, eMarketer found.

"Multitasking via mobile is primarily responsible for the overall increase in time spent with media," the report said. "Consumers are spending more of their time on mobile devices conducting attention-heavy activities like video viewing and mobile gaming, but also with less visual activities like audio listening that enable continuous media intake."

Radio attracts 1 hour, 26 minutes of Americans' daily attention, and print media gets 24 minutes, according to the study.

"The amount of attention that an individual can provide to media has its limits, though, and growth is slowing," eMarketer's report continued. "Time spent with mobile non-voice will rise by 12 minutes in 2017, and will be offset by declines in time spent with desktops/laptops, print, radio and — most of all — TV."

Although eMarketer expects that "TV will remain the most time-consuming traditional medium" for adults, it points out that the 3 hour, 58 minutes daily dose of all TV now is down seven minutes from last year, and is significantly lower that eMarketer's previously published forecast of 4 hours, 19 minutes per day.

Despite the growing number of ways people can watch video content, 92% of all viewing by U.S. adults is done on a TV screen, according to Nielsen.

Nielsen’s fourth-quarter "Comparable Metrics Report" found that adults spent 509 billion minutes viewing on TVs in the quarter and another 63.6 billion minutes viewing on TV-connected devices. Viewing video on PCs accounted for 31.7 billion minutes, smartphone video for 10.9 billion minutes and tablets for 4.4 billion minutes, for a combined share of viewing of 7.6%.

TV has a weekly reach of 89% of all adults, but only 79% of millennials (adults 18-34). TV-connected devices reach 44% of all adults and 54% of those 18-34.

Those young adults spent more time on their phones — 19 hours, 39 minutes per week — than watching the tube, at 19:18, according to Nielsen. Among all adults, 34 hours, 32 minutes per week were spent watching TV, with another 4:18 on TV-connected devices. They spent 17:48 per week on their phones.

Nielsen said its "Comparable Metrics Report" is an in-depth study of users and usage — averaged across the U.S. population — designed to provide an “apples to apples” view of consumption across TV, radio, TV-connected devices, PCs, smartphones and tablets.

“The fact of the matter is that viewers use the TV screen for the bulk of their viewing and spend more time doing so than all the other platforms combined,” said Tom Ziangas, SVP Research at AMC Networks. “Sure, viewers have more options today, but when looking at platforms in a comparative fashion, it’s clear that consumers choose the television as the primary vehicle for content,” he added.