Consumers that use a second screen whilst watching TV are more likely to stay in the room or not change channels during ad breaks, new research has found.

A new study carried out for Thinkbox by COG Research examined over 700 hours of TV viewing from the living rooms of 23 multi-screening households in the UK and revealed multi-screening viewers stayed in the room for 81% of ad break whereas those without stayed in the room for 72%.

Additionally, the report found a third of mutli-screening consumers chatted about TV programmes or ads on a second screen via text (22%), social media (18%) and mobile messenger services (10%).

Multi-screening also encourages more TV viewing. According to the findings, when one multi-screening viewer was alone in the room, 64% of their TV viewing sessions lasted for longer than 15 minutes compared to 47% when watching with no accompanying activity.

When two people were present, due to increased interaction the figures were lower.

Neil Mortensen, Thinkbox’s Research and Planning director, said: “Multi-screening is a huge benefit and opportunity for TV advertisers. Not just because it encourages people to watch more TV and more ad breaks – and does not adversely affect ad recognition – but because viewers now have the ability to act on what they see immediately. We’ve always multi-tasked in front of the TV but two screening is an incredibly complementary accompaniment.”