The Media users segmentation categorizes all GWI Core respondents into five segments based on their level of engagement with different media:
Non-users
Occasional users
Light users
Medium users
Heavy users
How are the segments created?
We ask respondents how frequently they interacted with different media in the past week and how much time they spent on each during their last day of use. Multiplying these factors (weekly frequency × daily duration) gives us a weekly time spent metric, which we use to segment respondents into approximate thirds: light, medium, and heavy users. Anyone who says they’ve engaged with a medium before, but not in the last week is classified as an occasional user, and anyone who reports never engaging with a certain medium is categorized as a non-users.
What can I use this for?
This segmentation provides a standardized measure of media engagement without requiring deep industry expertise to interpret time-spent patterns, as it eliminates ambiguity around whether a certain amount of time spent qualifies as light, medium or heavy usage.
It can be used for:
User Profiling: Identifying key characteristics of heavy users within different demographics (e.g., What are the traits of heavy mobile gamers aged 16-34?).
Market Comparisons: Analyzing engagement levels across countries (e.g., How do heavy podcast users in Japan compare to those in the US?).
Trend Analysis: Measuring changes over time (e.g., How has the number of heavy radio listeners changed year over year?).
Cross-Media Comparisons: Understanding audience differences (e.g., How do heavy streaming service users compare to heavy broadcast TV viewers?).
| Light users | Medium users | Heavy users |
Social media (eg.posts, stories, ads) | 2h 38m or less | 2h 39m- 10h 33m | 10h 34m or more
|
Short videos (eg. reels, tik toks) | 2h 16m or less
| 2h 17m- 6h 29m
| 6h 30m or more |
Streaming services
| 2h 39m or less | 2h 40m - 10h 29m
| 10h 30m or more |
Broadcast TV | 2h 16m or less | 2h 17m - 8h 29m
| 8h 30m or more |
Videos (eg. how-to’s, vlogs) | 1h 35m or less
| 1h 36m- 5h 59m
| 6h 00m or more |
Music Streaming | 1h 47m or less | 1h 48m - 7h 31m | 7h 32m or more |
Mobile games | 1h 47m or less
| 1h 48m- 7h 29m
| 7h 30m or more
|
Online press/articles | 47m or less | 48m - 3h 11m | 3h 12m or more |
PC/console games | 1h 29m or less
| 1h 30m - 4h 59m
| 5h or more |
Radio | 1h 29m or less
| 1h 30m - 4h 59m | 5h or more |
Podcasts | 59m or less
| 1h 00m - 3h 11m
| 3h 12m or more |
Physical Press | 41m or less
| 42m - 2h 29m
| 2h 30m or more |
Hours spent last week segmentation
The Hours Spent Last Week Segmentation categorizes all GWI Core respondents into eleven groups based on the total hours they spent engaging with each medium over the last week:
Non-users
Occasional users
1 min – 30 min
30 min – 1 hour
1 – 2 hours
2 – 3 hours
3 – 5 hours
5 – 7 hours
7 – 10 hours
10 – 13 hours
13 - 16 hours
16 - 20 hours
20 - 24 hours
24 - 28 hours
28+ hours
How are the groups created?
Respondents report how frequently they interacted with different media in the past week and the amount of time they spent on each during their last day of use. These two factors are combined to determine their total weekly hours spent, placing them into one of the eleven predefined groups.
Occasional users: Those who did not engage with a medium in the last week but report generally using it.
Non-users: Those who say they never engage with a given medium.
What can this segmentation be used for?
This segmentation provides a detailed breakdown of media engagement based on time spent, helping with:
Average Time Spent Analysis – Understanding usage patterns across demographics (e.g., How much time do different age groups spend reading physical newspapers?).
Media Comparisons & Attention Share – Identifying dominant media within target audiences (e.g., Which medium is most popular among women aged 35-44?).
Custom Grouping Options – Allowing for alternative segmentations (e.g., defining heavy, medium, and light users using different thresholds than those in the Media Users Segmentation).