At the Technology Council of Southern California awards dinner, Tony Perkins (founder of AlwaysOn and Red Herring, the latter—full disclosure time—for which I wrote after he’d sold it) gave the keynote. He argued that in trying to reach youths, the Web is much more important than TV or any other youth-beloved media. The accompanying short film he played was entertaining and cute, showing pre-teens candidly talking about their preference for all things online, but I thought that he’d missed one crucial point:

Internet users are multitaskers.

This is an important fact. Internet activities can be—and often are—done at the same time as other things, like watching TV. Therefore, marketers shouldn’t just engage in online campaigns—email messaging, ads on Web sites, social networking, in-game ads, and the like—while ignoring the rest. It makes sense to present one’s message everywhere the consumer looks—such as advertising on both TV and the Internet, as well as engaging in permission-based messaging campaigns.

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