Ad Budgets vs. Time Spent: The Metric That Means Opportunity by Chris Trayhorn, Publisher of mThink Blue Book, May 31, 2012 I’ve been talking for three years about networks and publishers positioning themselves to take advantage of the shift online of audiences from TV and print. When audience’s move, marketing dollars follow. The critical metric used to judge whether the shift in ad budgets is matching the shift in audience attention is ad spend vs. time spent. Until now, the proportion of time spent online by consumers has been ahead of the percentage of ad budgets devoted to online. In 2011, 22% of total audience time was spent online vs. only 16% of ad budgets. now it’s changed. In just one year, the ratio has shifted to 26% vs 22%. The relevant slide is shown here. A move of 6% of total ad budgets from offline to online is big news in itself, but I’d argue that the differential in mobile is as important. just 1% of ad budgets are currently devoted to a medium that commands 10% of consumer’s attention. That is what is known in the business as an OPPORTUNITY. Filed under: Revenue Tagged under: Advertising, CampaignManagement, Featured, Industry Trends, Media Buying About the Author Chris Trayhorn, Publisher of mThink Blue Book Chris Trayhorn is the Chairman of the Performance Marketing Industry Blue Ribbon Panel and the CEO of mThink.com, a leading online and content marketing agency. He has founded four successful marketing companies in London and San Francisco in the last 15 years, and is currently the founder and publisher of Revenue+Performance magazine, the magazine of the performance marketing industry since 2002.