Online Video Streaming on the Rise According to Nielsen
Last Updated on February 24, 2024 10:43 am by Jeffrey Powers
Nielsen released their quarterly report and the results are far from surprising in the fast growing digital age. According to the results from the second quarter of 2011, nearly half of Americans are now watching some of their content online through streaming video (Cross Platform Report). However, the increase does not seem to have affected the continued growth of those who prefer to watch TV the traditional way.
Online video content rose 15% to a total of four hours and twenty-six minutes, but that still only put it at an average of 3% of the time that Americans spend in front of the TV. Those who choose to spend their time in front of a traditional television set went up 1.9% to a total of 146 hours and 20 minutes. Even so, not all of those people are watching the televisions shows as they air.
Time-shifted TV watching also continues to grow year after year. Time-shifted TV includes TV that is watched via DVR or services like On-Demand. The second quarter results showed that time-shifted TV increased 11% with the number of homes that have a DVR going up to 39%. This is an increase of 13% from the past year. The amount of time-shifted viewing that takes place has increased 31% in the past two years and continues on a steady climb.
While TV watching continues to increase, so do the number of homes that are opting for broadband internet. Users that choose to pay for both TV and broadband have increased 6.6% year after year. A record number of 72% of homes currently pay to have some form of TV in their homes whether it be cable, satellite or telco while also paying for broadband internet.
Cable remains the most popular TV choice in most households as it holds 55.4% of the shares. This was an increase from the 53.4% that it held last year. Telco takes a
small percentage at 5.6% which has decreased from last year’s 6.9%, and satellite dropped from 30.5% to 29.7%. Still there is a percentage of homes that choose to have broadcast only television. That number is approximately 11.1 million (9.3%) and has increased from the 10.9 million that chose this option a year ago.
While streaming content online (Roku, Boxee, Apple TV) does continue to increase, the fact is that it is still quite concentrated in use. The top 20% of those who watch streaming content make up for 83% of the content that is watched. The top users tend to watch 18.9 streams per day which amounts to about 58.7 minutes of content. Nielsen found that those in the Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama areas watched more online video than other areas.
This is a guest post by Norma.
