Nielsen Report: TV Watching and Internet Use are Complementary

NEW
YORK, November 3: The heaviest TV watchers are also the most avid Internet
users, according to newly released data from The Nielsen Company's TV/Internet Convergence
Panel.

The
research reveals that the top fifth of Internet users spend more than 250 minutes per day
watching television, compared to 220 minutes of television viewing by people
who do not use the Internet at all. Similarly, the lowest consumers of TV have
the lowest usage levels for the Internet.

In
addition, almost 31 percent of in-home Internet activity takes place while the
user is watching TV. Further, some 50 percent of respondents had viewed some
form of Internet content. Those who were more regular users of streaming video
were female teens (82 percent), followed by male teens (64 percent), men 18 to
34 (57 percent) and men 35 to 54 (55 percent).

Teens
are the most likely demographic to have simultaneous TV/Internet usage, but
adults aged 35 to 54 have the most simultaneous usage minutes.

"With
our Convergence Panel we can now, for the first time, observe what could only
be guessed at before—how television viewing and Internet usage interact
and affect each other," said Howard Shimmel, the senior VP of client insights
at The Nielsen Company. "It is too early to draw any firm conclusions
about behavior but the early trends seem to indicate that online usage is
complementing, not substituting for, traditional television viewing. We will be
watching this trend carefully to see how television viewing drives Internet
usage and visa versa."

—By
Mansha Daswani