Don’t expect too much here because I’m working on no sleep as I forced myself to stay up and watch North Carolina beat Gonzaga in the NCAA Championship game and then could not fall asleep afterwards. I ended up watching TV on the couch until hitting the shower at 3:15 this morning.

Needless to say I won’t have much bounce in my step today and neither will Gonzaga who fell apart in the final two minutes and lost a chance to win their first National Title while the Tar Heels captured their sixth and avenged last year’s heartbreaking loss to Villanova.

Last week our company Townsquare Media hosted three days of marketing workshops and there was some interesting revelations about how the digital world has changed things.  For example:

  • The world’s largest taxi company owns no taxis Uber
  • Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate AIRBNB
  • Largest phone company has no telco infrastructure Skype
  • Most popular media owner creates no content Facebook
  • World’s largest movie house owns no cinemas Netflix
  • Largest software vendors don’t write the apps Apple/Google

Some other facts which I found interesting:

The average traditional TV viewer has increased in age by 41% since 1991 which is why when you watch network news its dominated by commercials for medical products aimed at an older demographic. Young people are spending more time on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and others and in many cases dropping cable TV all together.

Only 24% of adults read a daily newspaper…down from 49% just 12 years ago and more than 1-in-3 adults admit to being addicted to their smartphone.

Finally and maybe most revealing about the affects of an increasingly digitalized life style on the brain the average attention span of a human has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to less than 8 seconds now.  By comparison the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

 

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