Baidu Survey: Smartphones Are Now Main Media Looking For News Information

The rapid development of technology has succeeded in changing the way people obtain and consume information. Findings from research by Baidu and GfK Indonesia reveal that smart phones have now become the main choice of Indonesian urban communities in consuming news, followed by television. The majority of Indonesian urban communities are also said to have regularly followed news and information with varied content consumed

Last October to November 2015, Baidu and GfK Indonesia collaborated to conduct a research that studied the consumption of online news in Indonesia. This research focuses on Indonesian cities located in Java such as Jakarta, Bodetabek area, Bandung, Semarang and Surabaya with a mobile approach and direct interviews with respondents. The age range of the respondents themselves is in the age group of 13-55 years.

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As a result, Baidu drew five main conclusions that answered questions ranging from consumers of online news, the topics they searched for, the devices used to access online news, when to access online news, and how these consumers access the news.

Characteristics of consumption of Indonesian online news topics

According to Baidu's findings, the majority (81 percent) of Indonesians actually follow news and information regularly. What is interesting is this shift in the way we consume news and information. Now, according to Baidu, smart phones (96 percent) and television (91 percent) are the two main media used by Indonesian people to obtain information.

Baidu said that consumers of online news in Indonesia are more inclined to those aged 33-42 years and higher economic class. The male gender is also seen to consume online news more often than women. However, there is no dominant content in Indonesia according to Baidu.

But if it has to be broken down again, consumers at a young age are the group that consumes the most entertainment topics. Whereas in old age, preferences will shift to more serious topics such as socio-political issues, religion, to parents.

Device characteristics and time to access online news

As previously mentioned, there has been a shift in Indonesian urban society in the way they consume news and information. Smartphones are now the main media for consuming information and news, followed by television media. However, if we have to be specific again to online news, the order is smart phones (97 percent), office computers (16 percent), personal computers (13 percent), and tablets (6 percent).

Meanwhile, the favorite time for Indonesian urban communities to access online news and information is during the lunch break on weekdays, around 12 noon to 3 pm on Monday-Friday. This is also not much different from Saturday which shows the peak time for online news access at 12 noon to 6 pm. While on Sundays, peak times tend to be longer, which is from 12 noon to 9 pm.

The path to finding news online in Indonesia itself is still a combination of active efforts and referrals to other channels. This could come from search engines (31 percent) such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo, other channels in the same domain (28 percent), social media (24 percent), news sites (10 percent), or other referrals (7 percent) .

[See also:Baidu Survey: Online Advertising Effectiveness in Indonesia Still Low]

One other thing that needs to be considered by online business activists, including the media, is about advertising. According to Baidu's research, Indonesian people are very disturbed by advertisements such as Intrusive Ads, Targeting, Ads, and Mobile Ads. Tolerance to advertising is more shown in online ads such as Social media Ads, Search Engine Ads, and Email Ads.