Research Combines Internet, TV and Mobile Video

You want to know who's watching your videos? Well so does Nielsen as they are finally comparing the online video segment side-by-side with the traditional TV viewing segment and mobile video as well. Their new July 8^th report showed that consumers are watching more time-shifted TV and using the internet more.

For Internet there was a 9% increase in usage over last year and it was up to 26 hours and 26 minutes per month. People also watched more TV in May peaking at 127 hours and 15 minutes. Internet and mobile video are climbing as well. Internet was up to 2 hours and 19 minutes and mobile video watching peaked at 3 hours and 15 minutes. Additionally 95 million mobile subscribers also pay for mobile internet as part of their plan which shows there is a large amount of growth possible in mobile internet video advertising. Per person viewers watched more video on their mobiles than on their computers.

What does that mean for video advertising? More eyes, more time, more revenue? It's a possibility. While 65% of U.S. homes are getting digital cable and satellite and 35% have video-on-demand systems a small number of viewers are watching time shifted video. The cross-over between video-on-demand and online video is increasing and it appears that advertising across multiple platforms could see a large increase in the near future as well. But could the 25% with DVRs cut into those revenues by skipping the ads and only watching the shows? According to Nielsen only about 5% of total viewing is time-shifted so people appear to still be watching shows as they are offered instead of recording and watching at a later date which would allow them to skip the ads.

They also stated that of the 220 million Americans with Internet access at home or work 162 million of them were online in May. 119 million of them were watching 7.5 billion video streams in just May alone. As an added bonus for video advertisers, 36% of all mobile phone subscribers in the States have video-capable phones meaning another 91 million people have the ability to view video and video ads on the mobile platform. The 13.9 million people who are paying for a mobile video plan make up only about 6% of U.S. mobile subscribers leaving a major amount of room for growth. Of course only about 4.4 million of them are mobile video subscribers who are watching video at present on their mobile handsets but with approximately 4.4% actually viewing at present. Is the future going to be in mobile-optimized video ads?

With viewer time growing that means more ads will be seen. Even if people are time shifting some of their video they will still end up viewing ads on their other screens. Nielsen will be publishing the '3 screen' report quarterly so in a few months we should see if the trends shown in this report will continue.

For the full details and demographics on who is doing what and for how long, head over to the Nielsen website http://www.nielsen.com/pdf/3_Screen_Report_May08_FINAL.pdf