Dressing up the numbers?

I opened my eMarketer email from this morning and below the fold was an article, "Digital Set to Surpass TV in Time Spent with US Media." The first table, complete with mice type (must read that), shows that digital usage is broken down into online (with that vital asterisk), mobile (nonvoice) that includes tablet and feature cell phones—the one's that are considered not smart—and other, which isn't explained. It also shows how its results differ from other research firms because it lumps a lot of other stuff in with its numbers and gets a bit fuzzy with handling multi-tasking time.

 What caught my eye, though, was there was no explanation of what constitutes digital usage. TV usage is pretty self explanatory—turn it on, watch a show, turn it off—but digital usage can be anything from texting to posting pictures of your cat wearing sunglasses. It's like comparing a hammer to a Swiss Army knife; the hammer only does one thing while the Swiss Army knife can do many… except, of course, what a hammer can do.

That people are using mobile and tablets instead of desktops and laptops is not surprising as sales trends show people shifting from one device to the other. In fact, they're obsessed with them. Sit in any meeting, have a conversation with your teenager, ride any public conveyance or walk down any street and you'll see people totally absorbed and, sometimes, dangerously unaware of their surroundings. Like here, here and here.

To be fair, eMarketer should provide a breakdown of mobile usage by task: checking and reading email, texting, posting cat pictures, information gathering (schedules, prices, locations, blog and news viewing, etc), purchases and TV viewing. Apples to apples, not hammers to knives.