Here at Meyer & Wallis, we were just working on a presentation for one of our clients. They're an undergraduate university, targeting high school juniors and seniors with their new campaign. In our preparation, we cited a very well-known metrics provider whose published statistic had the average teen online for 11.5 hours a month. A MONTH. Several of us raised a red flag on that one, so we called the company, who said they've since revised that figure to about 25 hours a month. Really? Less than an hour a day? Are you seriously serious?

I suppose when the television came out, there were die-hard naysayers who swore it would never steal market share or significance from radio. They probably even settled into some serious denial about how popular TV was getting.

Let's be clear. Young adults entering college this fall were born in 1991, the same year America Online was launched for home computers. This generation has never known a world without the internet. And it has grown up along side them. They are as infinitely familiar with it as our great great grandparents were with typewriters or telegraphs, or as people always have been with the newest technology of their generation. To assume that teens will now suddenly conform their use of the media to that of us adults is just silly.

What am I saying? This generation is already starting to graduate from college and enter the workplace. As they gain more buying power, more advertising of traditional goods and services will be aimed at them. This will necessarily mean more interactive marketing, and probably less traditional marketing as we've known it. And yet it seems that there are still those big name companies who would have us believe that the standard media mix of the last 50 years isn't really going to change.

Well, change is coming:
$55 Billion Forecast for Interactive Marketing in 2014

With each passing year, there will be more and more consumers expecting marketers to meet them in the digital realm; not for the novelty of it, but because that's where they've lived all their lives.

I would think that statistic we cited should be about 400 hours a week. Not in terms of undivided attention, but in terms of availability and access. Think about it. Kids always have their cellphones on them, and many of these can access Facebook and Twitter, if not the whole internet. When they're home doing their homework, they're in front of their computers. And when they're done with their homework, they're still in front of their computers chatting with their friends. They shop/play/learn/socialize/create online. If teens are awake, they're plugged in.

So, are you ready for the digital realm? More and more, your customers are there. Meyer & Wallis is there. Are you?