Whichever Screen, People Are Watching

Brian Stelter

New York Times

July 8, 2008
 

SOMEHOW, despite more distractions than ever, we’re finding even more time to plant ourselves in front of screens.

The first in a series of new “three-screen” reports by the Nielsen Company shows an emerging shift toward a more video-centric use of the Internet, but not at the expense of television viewing. The report, an initial effort by Nielsen to “follow the video” as consumer viewing habits shift, is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The average American spent 127 hours of time with TV in May, up from 121 hours in May 2007; and 26 hours on the Internet, up from 24 hours last year. More than 282 million people watch television in a given month and nearly 162 million use the Internet.

Perhaps most important, the data reaffirms that online video viewing is no longer a novelty. Two-thirds of Internet users in the United States, 119 million people, watched video in May.

The amount of online video viewing is low compared with TV — 2 hours and 19 minutes a month on average — and Nielsen does not have a comparable estimate for last year. But given its popularity, it has attracted much interest from media companies and advertisers. All that viewing, 7.5 billion streams and 16.4 billion minutes in total, amounts to new advertising time for the taking.

“We’ve seen that certain events generate very high video viewing,” said Paul Donato, the chief research officer for Nielsen, citing last March’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament as an example. CBS streamed 4.9 million hours of audio and video content during the tournament, up from 2.7 million hours in 2007.

“Obviously those streams were either coming from people at work or from people who wanted to watch multiple games,” Mr. Donato said.

The report also suggests that mobile video viewing is becoming significant. A Nielsen survey of about 2,000 Americans projects that 4.4 million subscribe to mobile video on their phones. With 217 million people carrying mobile phones in the United States, wireless video is still far from the mainstream. But the survey found that the average user watches 3 hours and 15 minutes a month, a significant amount of time to be watching such a comparatively small screen.

With the “three-screen” reports, which will be released quarterly, Nielsen seeks to compile a complete picture of consumers’ media habits. The television networks and Web site operators that are Nielsen’s clients have been demanding three-screen measurement as they try to understand the relationships between TV sets, computer screens and mobile devices. But measuring consumer behavior in an age of convergence is proving to be difficult.

“Every single provider of alternative measurement has disappointed us,” Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC, said last week.

Without a third party to produce multi-platform ratings, NBC will combine Nielsen television ratings, internal Web site statistics, and mobile data to produce a daily report about the total reach of its Olympics telecasts next month.

“What we need is a currency,” a ratings metric to base multi-platform advertising rates on, “and no one’s done that yet,” Mr. Wurtzel said.

Almost two years ago Nielsen announced an “anytime anywhere” measurement initiative, but the tracking of individual consumers from the living room TV to the office computer to the mobile phone is still years away. Before the end of the year, Nielsen will begin a test of combined TV and Internet measurement and will roll out an experimental mobile phone measurement device.

Currently Nielsen fuses together its television ratings data and Internet video measurements to show how the two platforms influence each other. The “three-screen” report was produced in a similar way. Mr. Donato said the three-screen report represents progress and noted that there is increasing interest in knowing how consumers move among different devices.

“If you’re a network today, you’re desperate to know when somebody downloads your program on Amazon or iTunes, were they buying it as a replacement to their broadcast experience or as a supplement?” Mr. Donato said. “Is cannibalization taking place, or do these different platforms work in a harmonic way to support the business?”

To some extent, the report will reassure television executives and advertisers who worry that online video viewing will impact TV consumption. For every hour of online video viewing, consumers spend 57 hours watching TV. “Americans are watching more traditional television than ever,” the report concludes. The average consumer time-shifted — watched TV recorded earlier — almost six hours of programming in May, up from under four hours last year.

At the same time, the Nielsen data shows how pervasive online video is becoming in the lives of younger consumers. Children ages 2 to 11 use the Internet far less than other age groups, but they spend almost one-third of their online time watching videos.

“Their definition of the Internet is being formed by this high consumption of Internet video,” John Burbank, the chief marketing officer for Nielsen, said. “As these kids mature, networks are right in foreseeing that they’re going to use the Internet as a primary source for TV programming.”