During the coronavirus pandemic, many of us find ourselves online more – browsing, connecting with friends, or simply passing time – but how much more is more? In a recent Urban Science online study, we found adults are spending nearly 8 hours a week on websites and 6 hours on social media/streaming videos on average. In particular, we found that those intending to acquire a vehicle in the next year or in the next three months spend slightly less time on websites and more time streaming videos. This is great news for Automotive Marketers trying to capture additional wandering eyes.
Our Harris Poll study* also showed that more than half of consumers (including those who intend to purchase a vehicle in the next year or sooner) are spending time on e-commerce and news websites weekly. Of those adults looking to purchase in the next year or so, 2 of 5 are spending time on special interests, entertainment, and sports websites. E-commerce sites, like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, are the most likely to be visited.
*Urban Science Harris Poll Collaboration Study, “Continuing Through COVID: Are Consumer Car Buying Intentions Changing All That Much?”, 2020
Both those intending to purchase in the next three months and those in the next year spend 64% of their web activity on e-commerce sites.
Understanding where in-market shoppers are spending their web time is a key component for planning automotive digital ads. Our study helps identify what consumers are doing online and when they are intending to buy. The power of Urban Science data can help unlock new insights, for more information on this study or how our media performance solutions can enhance your automotive digital marketing strategies please reach out to Scott Clark or Carl Matter.
Survey method:
This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Urban Science from December 4 – 7, 2020 among 2,043 U.S. adults ages 18 and older from which a natural fallout sample of 675 members of the new auto-buying public were analyzed. For the purposes of this research, the new auto-buying public is defined as anyone who purchased/leased a new vehicle within the past 2 years or plans to purchase/lease a new vehicle in the next 12 months. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, marital status, household size and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.
For more information or if you’d like to learn more about our study, please reach out to lawaller@urbanscience.com
