TV remains the most dominant media, accounting for 24 per cent of the average waking time, ahead of time spent with radio at 13 per cent, seven per cent using the internet and three per cent reading a newspaper or magazine.

However, one of the most interesting trends emerging from the follow-up to IPA’s 2006 initiative concerns the amount of people using more than one medium at any one time.

While specific media mixes have yet to be mined from the study, in today’s 24/7, multimedia environment, 84 per cent of adults admit to having consumed more than one media in the same half an hour in any given week, up from 79 per cent in 2006.

Historically, such multi-tasking behaviour – like reading a magazine whilst listening to the radio – has been notoriously difficult for planners to quantify.

According to Grant Millar, managing director of Vizeum and former head of communication planning and media at BT, clients always want to know what the combined scale – overall reach - of a particular campaign is, and TouchPoints 2 goes some way to addressing it.

“Multi-channel solutions are becoming increasingly important,” agreed Mark Cross, communications planning director at COI, adding: “As these opportunities increase we need to make sure we are exploiting them. We think that TouchPoints has an active role to play in this agenda.”

The holistic study also addresses how the arrival of a truly digital world has affected the business of media planning.

“Digital isn’t a channel, digital is a way of life,” noted Richard Helyar, head of channel insight at Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH).

He believes the insights offered by TouchPoints 2 should make become the “inspiration and the start point” for all comms planning, although not the answer in itself.

Internet penetration now stands at 73 per cent of all adults, compared to 58 per cent in 2006. Thw eb is increasingly being used by the under 25s to consume traditional media: 29 per cent of adults have watched TV via the internet, 27 per cent listen to radio online, 12.1 per cent read national newspapers online and 9.7 per cent consume magazines online. 

Speaking at today’s launch, Ian Clarke, managing director of The London Paper, admitted that since its inception, TouchPoints had been one of the few projects used by every department in News International.

He said the first version helped shed light on a number of key areas, ranging from the early morning reading habits of its News of the World readers, to identifying the window of opportunity for an evening newspaper in the capital prior to The London Paper’s launch. 

Conducted by TNS, TouchPoints 2 involved 5,400 people aged 15 and over who, in addition to completing substantial questionnaires, also carried PDA time-based diaries that collected personal data every half an hour for a week.