Annual Conference 2019

Media multitasking, in its most general form, refers to situations when individuals are concurrently exposed to or switch between two or more sources of mediated content (Salvucci and Taatgen 2010). Multiscreening is a case of media multitasking where a user divides her attention between several screen devices (Segijn, Voorveld and Smit, 2016). This emerging habit creates a new type of consumer – consumer that has multiple opportunities to shift from one source to another the moment mediated content becomes less interesting or relevant. One important question for advertising research is how individuals engaging in media multitasking evaluate, process, and respond to commercial information. Another pressing question is what advertising agencies, companies, and media planners do to address the rising issue of a multitasking consumer. The discussion of this issue is especially relevant in light of the prediction that there will be 193 millions of adult media multitaskers in the U.S. by 2019 (eMarketer 2017). An international group of collaborators from academia and advertising industry will provide their insights to address these important questions in a 90-minute special topics panel. Each speaker will give a 7- to 8-minute talk followed by a discussion.