Significant opportunities exist for marketers to create cross-screen campaigns that integrate mobile with consumers? television watching habits, according to a new report from Razorfish.

In its annual outlook report, Razorfish reported that the media spend for mobile has nearly doubled in the last year. However, the agency also found that marketers tend to focus on mobile as a standalone medium and are not doing to enough to capitalize on consumers? multitasking behavior.

?The big news is that 80 percent of mobile phone owners are using phones while watching TV,? said Jeremy Lockhorn, vice president of emerging media at Razorfish, New York.

?This begs a reconsideration of a lot of different aspects of marketing,? he said. ?It is critical to think about creating true multiscreen experiences.

?A TV spot and mobile screen should be working toward a much better and engaging marketing experience.

Beyond URLs
Nearly 80 percent of respondents reported multitasking on their mobile device while watching TV at home, with 15 percent staying on their device for the duration of the show.

As a result of this multitasking behavior, there is an opportunity for advertisers to more closely align their TV ads to their mobile offerings beyond including a URL on an ad or asking viewers to ?Like? a brand on Facebook.

Razorfish worked with Yahoo on the study of Web-enabled phone owners to better understand their multitasking behavior when it comes to TV viewing.

Additional findings include that 70 percent of mobile phone owners engage in mobile, TV multitasking behavior at least once a week and 49 percent do so every day.

During the course of a TV program, more than 60 percent check their phones at least once or twice and 15 percent stay on the mobile Web for the duration of the show.

The top five categories that attract multitaskers are reality, news, comedy, sports and food.

Communication versus content
Respondents were asked to provide more detail about what they are doing on their phones and Razorfish found that responses mostly fell into one of two categories: content and communication.

Communication activities dominated in the responses, with 94 percent of multitaskers engaging in some kind of mobile communication. In order, these are text, email, social networking and IM.

Fewer respondents are engaging in social media on their mobile phones while watching TV than was expected.

?That was a surprise, to see social media come in behind other forms of direct communication,? Mr. Lockhorn said. ?Part of the reason why is that there hasn?t yet been a great experience on the mobile device or tablet to facilitate that social experience simultaneous to TV viewing.?

On the content side, 60 percent of multitaskers are accessing additional content of some type, with 44 percent unrelated to what is on TV and 38 percent related to TV. Additionally, 36 percent of multitaskers use their connected devices for looking up information on a commercial they just saw.

Phones and tablets are more likely to get fired up and accessed during regular commercial pods.

Almost half of respondents reported multitasking during sporting events.

For brands that spend heavily on TV, the report lays out the need to create content and experiences that move seamlessly from the TV screen to mobile screens.

Having a mobile-optimized site is not enough. Marketers need to have cohesive communications strategies, mobile optimized sites that know what is happening in the TV spots and appropriate mobile calls to action.

?Even with the dominance of multitasking behavior, marketers are doing simple things like including a URL in a TV spot but there is not a more overall experience that is interactive with mobile,? Mr. Lockhorn said.

?We are going to see a ton of experimentation with this moving into 2012,? he said. ?All of our big media clients are asking about this and are open to suggestions.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York