Time spent with media to fall “precipitously” in 2025
The good news is consumer time spent with media continues to rise, but the bad news, states MediaDailyNews, is the share of time it spends with ad-supported media continues to decline, according to findings from the 2025 edition of PQ Media’s annual Global Consumer Media Usage Forecast. That’s the trend in both the U.S. and the worldwide media marketplace.
MediaDailyNews reports that globally, “PQ estimates consumer time spent with all forms of media — both digital and non-digital — rose 2.4% to 57.2 hours weekly in 2024. That’s an increase of 11.1% from the 51.5 hours weekly consumers spent with media in 2019, according to PQ and follows a sharp recent deceleration in 2023 coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That said, PQ forecasts worldwide consumer time spent with media will decline for the first time since the “Great Recession,” dropping 0.3% to 57.0 hours weekly in 2025.”
“Media consumption has reached its saturation point as digital device penetration rates having peaked in major developed markets, like the U.S.,” PQ notes in its news report, adding, “Analysis of the 2024-2029 period indicates that media usage with rise in even years when most domestic and global markets hold federal elections, as well as major international sporting events like the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and the World Hockey Cup.”
PQ predicts American time spent with media will fall even more precipitously this year — dropping 1.8% — from 2024 to 79.6 hours weekly this year.
