GigaOM Pro Research Director David Card took the stage at paidContent 2012 to answer those questions and discuss one of the key challenges content distributors and marketers are facing — discoverability. Some of the biggest takeaways:

• Traditional discovery tools still dominate. People rely mainly on recommendations from friends, advertisements and search engines. Adoption rates for newer services like GetGlue and Flixster are in the low double digits.
• Radio and print users are more digitally adventurous. They convert to paid content, especially for music downloads.
• TV fans are less likely than print fans to use social networks for discovery.
• There’s a new, powerful audience that uses social networks to find content — not just talk about it. This “social explorer” makes up 17% of all consumers, largely aged 18-34.

Much more in Card’s slides, embedded below:

Can Digital Discovery Live Up to its Potential?

Check out the rest of our coverage of paidContent 2012. Full archived video on livestream (registration required).

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [olly].