Advertisers and researchers have spent a lot of time thinking about what multi-screening behaviour means forbrands. As an industry, we’ve learned that individual screens – our phones, laptops,tablets, PCs and TVs – now rarely receive our undivided attention. Hence, the growing importance of ‘screen neutral’ content that works across different platforms, and connected campaigns that create journeys across different devices.

Much work has been done to try to identify and codify the different types of things these screens are used for. Microsoft’s ‘Meet the Screens’ project is one example – an archetypal model of usage: the TV is the everyman, the familiar entertainer; the mobile, our lover, always by our side; the tablet is the explorer, the window to discoveringentertaining content; and the laptop is our trusted sage.

Yet research among the 40 families within MediaCom’s Real World Britain mobile ethnography project suggests these devices are being used much more fluidly than typical screen behaviour categorisations would suggest.

Watch… and learn
Through the research, we discovered that context – rather than screen type – is much more likely to determine usage behaviours. We saw examples of large desktop monitors becoming the second ‘primary screen’ in the room, with families actively splitting their attention between football on one screen and TV dramas on the other. One family went so far as to have two screens on opposite walls of the same room.

We also saw examples of small screens, such as smartphones, being used to watch ‘large screen’ content despite a TV being present in the room. “When I go to my boyfriend’s parents and they’re watching a film that I don’t really want to watch, I just get out my iPhone and put my earphones in so I can watch something else,” explained 31-year-old Hayley, of Yorkshire.

And what may serve as a communications device in one context – the teenager’s smartphone that’s used to message friends on Facebook while in the family living room – can switch to a content discovery platform in the bedroom when the TV screen takes on the role of social communicator; so that same teenager is now chatting via Xbox Live while using the smartphone to find and share YouTube videos.

Man and machine
Categorising screen behaviours might help us take important planning decisions about what roles different screens can play throughout a campaign. However, our research highlights how important it is to remember that human behaviour does not adhere to neat categorisations and is, instead, often driven by pragmatic and emotional needs – such as the girlfriend who doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend’s side to catch up on her favourite TV series.

The natural fluidity and adaptive skill of human behaviour bends screens to our own needs, rather than our behaviour simply being determined by technological developments.

Claire McAlpine is an associate director at MediaCom