Nielson Publishes 3 Screen Usage Statistics

The Nielson Company has issued its 4Q08 three screen video usage survey for the U.S. This survey shows TV viewing, time shifted TV viewing, Internet usage, Internet video viewing, and mobile TV viewing.

Regular TV viewing dominates in terms of the number of viewers as well as the amount of time spent viewing. The demographic breakdown shows that the age groups above 55 are the most avid viewers of regular TV. The age groups between 18 and 34 watches the most Internet videos. The age groups between 25 and 44 make the most use of mobile video.

This report shows that the new technologies are most used by younger people, but that traditional TV is still very strong. It will be interesting to see how these trends hold as this population ages. I think that these younger groups will continue to use these new technologies, but that there viewing habits will be similar to those of their parents today.

Nielson TV Viewing Numbers

Light Reading has published an article giving the results of the latest Nielson study of TV viewing in the U.S. Interesting conclusions from these numbers include:

• About 55 percent of Internet users watch videos over the Internet
• About 22 percent of TV viewers are using DVRs and is growing strongly
• The number of mobile TV viewers is about 2 percent of the number of TV users
• Average time spent watching Internet videos is only about 2 percent of the time watching TV
• Mobile TV users watch it only about 3 percent of the time spent watching TV, however more than 3 hours a month is significant for such a small screen.

It is worth looking at the tables in the Light Reading article. While Internet video is getting a lot of attention, most people just do not watch it very much. Mobile TV has not caught on yet but appears to watched on a regular but casual basis.