In more ways than we can realize, our day-to-day lives have been disrupted with the ongoing pandemic. Especially those with the traditional nine-to-five day jobs. The country’s quarantine forced many to bring the office home and blurring the lines between work, life and leisure.
Here at Farfetched Studios we know that with more time at home, it means more time to expose customers to a wide array of content and ads in our ever growing digital world. The longer Americans work from home, the greater the chance that their recently developed media habits will stay with them. This will ultimately change the way publisher and advertisers are able to engage with their targeted audiences. Is daytime the new primetime? A future where customers spend more time at home leads us to increased opportunities and focus for business to grow locally.
According to Nielsen, two-thirds of U.S. “stay at home” workers reported starting to work from home since the initial outbreak. This was a massive migration of people into a different work setting. Despite the drastic change, people adapted quickly and became comfortable with the new norm of work and life together. Some even seem to be thriving in their current surroundings.
Overall, people are settling in with ease, but while looking at their sentiments on remote work, consumers say that it affords them a level of choice in choosing how much content to watch, as well as when and where to connect with it. Being able to choose when and how they work allows them to accomplish a more agreeable work/life balance. This has resulted in an embrace of virtual technologies and their local communities and businesses.
With the flexibility of work schedules, what is media consumption looking like for the average consumer? The answer: less structured media consumption as work and leisure become more entangled.
Before the pandemic, media peak hours were limited to before employees clocked in and after they clocked out for the day. With there no longer being a commute and restrictions lifted on what platforms are made available during the day, working from home offers time and choice to their media consumption. Whether it is streaming video, listening to podcasts or scrolling through social media, most consumers have admitted to partaking in these behaviors during work hours. This gives businesses and advertisers an increased window of opportunity to reach audiences outside of traditional primetime engagement.
In comparison to those who were working from home before, new stay-at-home workers watch TV-Connected devices and digital platforms at a higher rate. With an average of 7 hours dedicated to devices other than linear television. These new remote workers have fully embraced their new freedoms during the work day. Their freedom of choice has given them more content to view via dynamic media platforms.
According to the Nielsen Remote Workers Consumer Survey, “52% of consumers would like to be able to work from home going forward, while 25% would like to work from home exclusively.” Widespread remote work could further embed the media habits that people have adopted during the quarantine.
Working from home is contingent on employees working and not streaming content their entire work day. As new remote workers broaden their days and adjust to the new situation, employers are making an effort to optimize employee home life. Stay-at-home workers in the long term could be greatly beneficial to the media and advertising businesses!
