As most parents can attest, it's a rare moment when teenagers focus on one activity with their full attention, and that is certainly the case when it comes to using media.
    About 80 percent of teens regularly use more than one media type at a given time, as compared to more than 60 percent of kids, and all that leaves advertisers with a far harder challenge in getting noticed amid the clutter.

   Those are the findings of a study presented earlier this week at an Advertising Research Foundation workshop, which was jointly conducted by MindShare, using the results of an online survey, and Arbitron, which incorporated findings from its Portable People Meter. The PPM is a mostly passive measurement tool being tested in the Philadelphia area.

    More than 60 percent of teens say they regularly go online while watching TV. An equal number say they read a magazine when watching TV, while nearly 60 percent use instant messaging and about 35 percent listen to the radio while watching TV.

    “I think the fluidity of attention definitely puts the pressure on advertisers and their creative agencies to get the attention of kids,” says Roberta McConochie, director of consumer and industry trends at Arbitron.

   “The smartest thing that you can do is use cross-media synergies to make sure your message gets through and, obviously, do things that get their attention with the message content.”

    Teens also use a number of other media types while listening to the radio.

    About 80 percent say they regularly go online when listening to the radio, roughly 75 percent read a magazine, more than 60 percent go online to use the instant message feature and about 30 percent watch TV while listening.

    Using other media types while going online is clearly commonplace among teens.

    Nearly 80 percent say they listen to pre-recorded music while online, 75 percent listen to the radio, more than 50 percent watch TV and nearly 20 percent read a magazine.

    Further, while they're watching TV and listening to the radio and surfing teens are also busy doing all the things teens are wont to do.
    “What isn't there and what's fascinating is all of the other things that they are multi-tasking with,” says Debbie Solomon, senior partner and group research director at MindShare.

    “If you think about it, anything that you do takes some of your attention. For the purposes of this presentation we stuck to the data on media, but we also had [information on] eating, talking on the phone, doing homework and those types of things.”

    Younger kids were also found to use multiple media types, although not to the extent found in teens.

     Teens are also more likely than adults to use more than one media type at the same time.

    Although the MindShare/Arbitron study did not look at usage among adults, a separate study from eMarketer, based on data from BIGresearch that is not based on a nationally representative sample, found that 35 percent of adults watch TV while using the internet. Nearly 17 percent regularly listen to the radio while online and about 8 percent read a newspaper or magazine.

    When it comes to breaking through the clutter, advertisers are most challenged by teens.

     Part of the reason for that is that while teens have the highest tendency to use multiple media types at one time, they also generally use less media than kids or adults.

    “I think teens inherently have less time for media and that's probably the biggest part of this,” says Solomon.

    Teens, for example, watch less broadcast TV than kids or adults and less cable TV than kids, according to the MindShare/Arbitron study. At the same time, teens listen to the radio less often than adults but more often than kids.