The Media that Engineers are Reading

It’s no secret that digital media is replacing print. 

But it is pretty shocking to see how fast that’s happening.  Here is a chart I put together from research done by eMarketer. 

I apologize for the potential confusion of using two different scales, one for online on the left and one for magazines on the right.  The chart is meant to show daily time spent by U.S. adults online versus reading magazines.  The line for time spent online is in blue while the time spent reading magazines is in red. 

The chart shows that in 2010, typical U.S. adults spent 194 minutes daily online compared with 20 minutes for magazines.  In 2013 the time spent daily online has grown to 309 minutes, while the time spent reading magazines has dropped off a cliff.  The average U.S. adult now spends only 14 minutes a day reading magazines. 

This chart shows pretty starkly the relative rates of change in time spent online compared to reading magazines.  And magazines are getting killed.

It’s up to you whether you extrapolate these results to engineers reading trade magazines.  But why wouldn’t engineers behave similarly to the rest of the population in this regard?

So if you are still buying trade publication advertising, and a rule of thumb is that it costs 15X more for a print impression than online, then maybe it’s time to dedicate even more of your budget to digital.