OPA Study Runs Out Of Names For Online Activity

The time consumers spent viewing online content, including video-sharing sites, news sites, video, social nets, weather and blogs, as a proportion of their total time online grew over the past four years from 34 percent in 2003 to 47 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, time spent on communications fell 28 percent as a proportion of total time spent online. Communications now makes up 33 percent of all time spent online, down from 46 percent in 2003.

The OPA attributes the shift to several factors, including an increase in the volume of content online, the transition of traditionally offline media activities to the Web, and continued broadband adoption. This latter factor has enabled a lift in overall time spent online –- as opposed to share of time spent -- across all four categories studied: content, search, commerce, and communications.