Many people are worried that they spend too much time on their screens, and are searching for ways to disconnect. This is true in all ages. Our use of medium is driven more by the usage than by the content. Newspapers have experience a massive shift in readership in recent years not because people don’t like reading newspapers, but because the content is better suited to the way that we read on screens. Twitter is the perfect expression of the onscreen reading style we all unconsciously adopt, short sharp and to the point. Newspaper articles are typically short and can be read in a matter of minutes, and are well suited to being read on screen.
After decades of unbridled enthusiasm, bordering on addiction, about all things digital, the public is losing it’s trust in digital. Online information isn’t reliable, whether it appears in the form of news, search results or user reviews.
In the mature digital markets of Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, however, people have been using the internet, mobile phones, social media and smartphone apps for many years. Users in those locations are less trusting, prone to switching away from sites that don’t load rapidly or are hard to use, and abandoning online shopping carts if the purchase process is too complex.
The split between what people will read on screens, and what they will read on paper is more operational than generational. Screens deliver content differently than paper does, and so readers go for different kinds of reading experiences. “Search and destroy” versus “settle down” reading experiences.
Tactile
Paper has been a critical part of our communication system for thousands of years. It has outlasted many challenges, and challengers, and still remains a viable and important medium of communication. There are a lot of studies looking into why, and how, even in the face of the ubiquitous internet, paper remains and has not gone the way of the horse and carriage.
All of those studies really boil down to one simple reason, we like it. People like using paper to communicate. Paper does these jobs in a way that pleases us, which is why, for centuries, we have liked having it around.
Visual
This fondness for using paper extends to advertisements. In 2004 Olson Zaltman and Associates carried out a study for Conde Naste publishers to investigate how consumers respond to magazine and television ads, and if there is a difference. Though the study didn’t look at Internet marketing, the delivery system for much of Internet marketing is similar to television marketing, so it is at least indicative. There is a large difference to how consumers respond to print versus video advertisements, and it comes down to control. Viewers on television, or online, are forced to watch the ads, turning the video viewing experience into a battle for control, forcing viewers to retaliate through measures like changing the channel, leaving the room, or closing their eyes to avoid the commercials.
Because paper is ‘lighter in its assertion of control,’ it
draws readers in. engage with the content
—not just ads but all content—more fully.
Conversely respondents had a generally positive opinion of ads in magazines. The reader can choose to engage with the ad or not, and because of the nature of paper, they can come back later and look at it. One subject said “It’s there, I can take it or leave it . . . . Because I have control, I can take the time to make particular decisions [about] which ads I will savor and absorb.” By making no attempt to seize control in the same way that television ads, website pop ups, pre roll or autoplay videos do paper gives control to the viewer, and in a kind of viewing jujitsu, it is able to gain more control, be more immersive that video.
I feel “UGHHH”. And then I see how long the advertisement will last and if I have the option to skip it… I often skip it right away.
Rather annoying. I am usually happy once I can skip the ad to view the video.
It better be really funny or shocking in the first 5 seconds or I am not paying attention. If I can’t skip then I usually do something else for the 30 seconds.
Quotes from participants about pre-roll advertising
Hamlets Blackberry, William Powers 2006, p4
A communicators guide to the neuroscience of touch, Sappi, 2015 p33
We bombard customers with thousands of ads a day, subject them to the endless ad load times, interrupt them with pop-ups and overpopulate their screens and feed….and with ad blockers growing 40 per cent and fraud as high as 20 per cent, who knows if they’re even seeing our ads
Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, P&G.



