TouchPoints

TouchPoints is an essential tool for everyone in the advertising industry. We already have over 70 subscribers including the top ten media agencies and media owners covering all areas of the business. 

By highlighting the habits and media moments of multiple target markets, TouchPoints helps us understand the context of media consumption throughout the day or across a week. These insights can help you with your communication planning and buying.

It creates a 360-degree view of people’s daily lives and all the information you need to successfully implement cross-media channel planning.

Here's a great introduction to TouchPoints video to show you how it all works.

Mobile phone time overtakes TV set viewing

According to the findings, British adults now use their mobile phones for an average of 3 hours and 21 minutes per day. By comparison, they watch a TV set for an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes per day - marking a significant media shift.

This tipping point has been driven by a steady rise in mobile phone usage over the past decade. Average British adult mobile phone usage time has increased from 1 hour 17 minutes per day in 2015. In contrast, TV set viewing has remained relatively stable over the same period, measuring 3 hours 23 minutes in 2015.

Younger generation leads the shift

The younger generation is the driving force behind this change. Those aged 15–24 now spend almost 5 hours daily (4 hrs 49 mins) on their mobile phones and under 2 hours (1 hr 49 mins) watching the TV set. Conversely, those aged 65–74 spend 4 hrs 40 mins watching the TV set and under 2 hours (1 hr 47 mins) on their mobile phones, highlighting a clear generational divide.

Mobile is "always on"

TouchPoints data reveals differing usage patterns across devices. TV set viewing peaks in the evening and computer use aligns with the traditional 9–5 workday, dropping off after hours. However, mobile usage remains consistently high from morning until bedtime, suggesting mobile phones are now the most constant media companion.

British adults spend almost 7 and a half hours a day on screens

When all screen-based activities are combined, including mobile phones, TV sets, laptops, tablets, and games consoles, British adults now spend an average of 7 hours and 27 minutes per day consuming screen-based media. This represents an increase from 6 hours and 36 minutes in 2015.

Medium shapes mood: set-based viewing more relaxing

TouchPoints also tracks emotional states throughout the day. The data reveals that British adults are 52% more likely to feel relaxed when watching the TV set compared to viewing video on a mobile phone. Conversely, viewers are 55% more likely to report feeling sad when watching video on a mobile phone versus on a television set.

These are just some of the arresting findings from the 2025 IPA TouchPoints data which, in revealing the habits of British consumers’ daily lives and how their media usage fits into this. The nationally representative survey was carried out on over 6,000 GB adults aged 15+, between September–December 2024 and January–April 2025.

Find out more by watching the video of the TouchPoints 2025 Launch.

How TouchPoints works

 TouchPoints provides two distinct databases:

1. TouchPoints Daily Life offers a detailed view of ‘a week in the life’ of consumer behaviour.
2. The TouchPoints Channel Planner is the only industry-available, cross-media channel planner. It has been created by integrating the industry media currencies onto TouchPoints Daily Life, including BARB, FAME, JICREG, JICMAIL, PAMCo, RAJAR, Route, and UKOM. For product and brand information we also integrate TGI and YouGov.

TouchPoints has also been designed to facilitate the integration of clients’ own datasets or proprietary tools.

The TouchPoints data can be analysed within software bureaux systems such as Telmar, via MediaTel Connected, on the DayLite dashboard and also in raw Respondent Level Data format via Google BigQuery.

How we collect TouchPoints data

TouchPoints Daily Life is based on a representative sample of over 6,000 adults aged 15+, living in Great Britain.

Each respondent is asked to:

• Keep a diary via their mobile phone, detailing their activities every half an hour over seven days
• Complete an online questionnaire about how they spend their daily lives covering attitudes, shopping and media behaviour

View the most recent 2024 TouchPoints Questionnaire and TouchPoints Diary.

TouchPoints Channel Planner

The TouchPoints Daily Life data set is expanded onto the BARB Establishment Survey. This creates an average of nine clones for every TouchPoints Daily Life respondent giving us an operational sample size of approximately 50,000.

This expansion allows all industry media currency respondents to be used in the integration process and this technique substantially strengthens the match of media research currencies to TouchPoints. These integrations create the database which delivers cross-media channel planning.

Where we do not currently have industry currencies (e.g. VoD) we model the data from our own diary and self-completion questionnaires.

Confused about the Channel Planner? Here's a great Channel Planner explainer video to show you how it all works.

TouchPoints: What's new

In addition to the launch of the 2025 IPA TouchPoints data, the IPA has published the sixth edition of the landmark report Making Sense – The commercial media landscape.

Making Sense - The commercial media landscape uses data from IPA TouchPoints 2025 (September–December 2024 and January–April 2025) to help planners and advertisers better understand how the commercial media landscape has evolved, and how this has influenced consumer behaviour and some of the changes which occurred as the country went into lockdown, and what is happening post-COVID. Making Sense - The commercial media landscape is an annual publication and the 8th edition will be published in September 2026.

Talking TouchPoints marks the 15th anniversary of the IPA TouchPoints study which provides a 360-degree understanding of people’s daily lives, their media usage and its context, enabling effective cross-media channel planning. Highlights, case studies and more have been captured in a new publication, Talking TouchPoints, that looks back at 15 years of the ground-breaking tool.

Useful TouchPoints Tools

To help you understand how you can benefit from TouchPoints data try these easy-to-use tools:

• DayLite - A quick and easy way to find out the daily media habits of a range of target markets along with a variety of qualitative data from TouchPoints on how people coped during the lockdown.
• ARC by TouchPoints is a quick ready reckoner to provide cover curves for each medium showing cover build vs GRPs. This tool will help you to estimate coverage based on different audiences, different GRP weights and different media.
• TouchPoints e-learning - Training and online module for newcomers.

How brands have used TouchPoints 

• TouchPoints helped identify key drinking moments for Fullers.
• TouchPoints identified opportunities in the non-linear audio space for BBC.
• TouchPoints helped inform the strategic approach with behavioural insight for MEC Public Health.

Access further examples in Talking Touchpoints: Celebrating 15 Years of TouchPoints, TouchPoints Works and TouchPoints Works 2 publications.