“Internet users watch 28% less TV than non-Internet users,” Jeffrey Cole, director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy says, “though Internet users still spend more time watching TV than they spend on the Internet.”

The result? Internet usage is helping to lower the effectiveness of TV advertising in ways that could force advertisers to look elsewhere for more efficient spending.

And where will they look? To the Net, among other place. In fact, it’s already started.

Meantime, the UCCP is getting ready to release results from year four of its 16-country study of more than 10,000 youngsters on how the Internet is affecting society and of the 11.8 hours the average surfer spends online weekly and, “more than half is coming from TV viewing and almost none from sleep or socialization,” Cole told punters at the iMedia Communications Brand Summit in Florida, as reported in AdAge here.

Growing penetration of broadband, used by 36.8% of Internet users last year, is, “at first blush good news for TV advertisers because broadband users are more likely to go online in short 2- to 3-minute bursts rather than the 30 minutes common among modem users, Cole went on.

“But the 2- to 3-minute bursts tend to come during TV commercial breaks, he said. “It’s becoming the thing people do during the commercials’.”

Cole is also, “beginning to see the initial stages of a trend toward broadband connections in kitchens,” the AdAge syory says. “More than half of Internet users multitask, he said, with TV viewing the most common second task and a third of the multi-taskers doing at least three things at once.”

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