Members of the coveted millennial audience spend about as much of their time online perusing social- media platforms as they do watching over-the-top video, according to a new study from content delivery specialist Limelight Networks.
Those activities were neck and neck, followed closely by reading news content, per Limelight’s second annual State of the User Experience report, which tallied results from more than 1,300 consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore. When a larger group of consumers were added to the mix, social networking dominated time spent online, followed by video viewing.
And it’s increasingly clear that eyeballs continue to shift from traditional TV. Limelight said 45% of those surveyed spend more than 15 hours per week online outside of work, up from 23% in the year-ago study. Interestingly, 51% of baby boomers (51-to-69-yearolds) said they spent that much time online, versus 41% among the millennials studied.
Limelight also found that consumers are becoming generally more patient with buffering and loading times. Last year, 41% of respondents were willing to wait five seconds or more for a website to load, but this year’s study found 52% of respondents were willing to wait that long.
Consumers are also expecting improved mobile experiences. About 35% of respondents to the 2015 study were willing to wait longer for a webpage to load on a mobile device, down from 44%. Likewise, 26% were willing to deal with longer load times on PCs, up from 15%. “The flip-flop between 2014 and 2015 clearly indicates that performance for the mobile Web has become top-of-mind for consumers,” Limelight said.
