Lunchtime is the New Primetime

A recent NY Times article highlights the rise of midday “media snacking” by cubicle dwellers, a trend that’s affecting not only office culture, but online media producers and the advertisers who help support them as well. An increasing number of 9-to-5ers are opting to spend their lunch hour breaks viewing online shows, news recaps, and maybe the random YouTube clip over the traditional lunch, sometimes stockpiling clips throughout the day and coordinating simultaneous watching with coworkers. Video-hosting sites and other websites featuring video content are seeing a spike in viewership during the three hour period around 12 noon, with shows like Yahoo’s The 9, a best-of-the-Web segment (sponsored by Pepsi), or Political Lunch, a popular three-minute webcast on politics, catered to office snackers (brief with daily updated content). And advertisers are finding that online content made with the midday viewer in mind are perfect for targeted marketing:

From an advertiser’s perspective, the Web is a more flexible medium than television, because technology makes it easy to monitor people’s behavior and adjust programming accordingly. Better still, marketers have found that consumers are up to 30 percent more likely to make a purchase after viewing an advertisement at lunchtime than at other times of the day.

“Not only is advertising volume and Internet use increasing during the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. time period, but people are actually buying and purchasing and reacting to advertising,” said Young-Bean Song, vice president for analytics at Atlas Solutions, a unit of Microsoft that helps companies with digital marketing campaigns.

[via NY Times]