Photograph by Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images
A supporter at a Barack Obama campaign event in Chicago on August 12, 2012.
Nearly half of likely voters own a smartphone, a third skip commercials when watching television because they have digital video recorders and a third own a tablet computer.
Those are some of the findings from a national survey conducted by digital publisher SAY Media that tried to analyze the shift in the overall consumption habits of voters and their role in political advertising.
The survey found live TV viewership is on the decline, with nearly a quarter of likely voters planning to switch to digital streaming from traditional video providers in one or two years.
Both presidential campaigns have aggressive social media and Internet strategies. Republican Mitt Romney, for example, formally announced his running mate selection via a smartphone app. Still, industry analysts estimate political entities will spend as much as $3 billion on TV ads this election cycle.
“There is a fundamental shift away from modes and platforms that require the watching of interruptive TV ads,” David Tokheim, senior vice president media solutions at SAY Media, said in a statement.
The study paid special attention to the battleground states of Florida and Ohio, where it found the smartphone ownership rates to be 53 percent and 41 percent, respectively.
The bipartisan study used two polling firms and conducted a national telephone survey of 800 likely voters from June 20 to June 24, plus an oversample in Ohio that included 332 likely voters in Ohio and 355 in Florida.
