The pull era: Why media survival hinges on the phone-centric consumer

“You must see the whole consumer simultaneously, because most video is now consumed on phones,” said Shapiro. “We have left the top-down era and are now in the pull, user-centric era. The phone is the remote control of our whole lives. The most important thing you need to know is who the user is, and how they behave. If you ignore them and don't put them at the centre of what you do, you’re f****d.” 

Shapiro reminded the audience that 70% of the world right now is millennials and younger, and 81% of the population of Earth is under 55. Raised with phones in their pockets, this generation consumes media very differently.  

“Most video on Earth is watched on phones and in bed, waiting in line, and on the toilet. The younger you get, the more true this is,” said Shapiro. “When I say the whole consumer [journey], I mean living room to bed, bus to couch, and couch to toilet.” 

In Shapiro's view, the industry is seeing this bifurcation in real time in Europe, where two-thirds of people are under 55 years old. “A lot of the things that have happened in the US and other places around the world are slower to get here because you’re old, it takes you longer to adapt, and you have more free public media than we have in the US. There is a lag, but the wave is coming this way.” 

Those who expected traditional media to be replaced dollar for dollar and audience for audience by streaming were reportedly wrong. Time spent consuming traditional TV is now being replaced by a combination of streaming and social media, on televisions and phones, Shapiro's research found.  

“This is what I call personalised TV,” added Shapiro. “BBC iPlayer is in this continuum, but so is TikTok. Traditional TV is sunsetting on purpose as we switch to digital, and streaming is picking up a lot of that time, with social video, time on phone taking more of that time than television is.” 

He also highlighted that a shrinking minority of consumers are watching hours of traditional TV, and that even for under-55-year-olds, the top two content sources are YouTube and TikTok. “None of the traditional TV players are in the top four; the only one is Netflix,” said Shapiro. “In the UK, Instagram is beating the BBC for total attention.” He concluded that social media and creators are more trusted than traditional news, and to win in this attention economy, traditional news must lean into the creator economy and direct the narrative.