Susan Whiting

 

For decades, Nielsen has been synonymous with ratings and research about television and advertising. It continues to track audience and consumer trends even as technology offers new ways of enjoying content. Recently, Nielsen’s Anywhere Anytime Media Measurement, also known as the Three Screen Report, has shown that viewers gravitate toward the most convenient screen available.

 

WS: What are you learning from the Three Screen Report?

WHITING:We are learning that overall video usage is up. And the amount of time that people are spending on additional screens beyond TV—on the PC and the mobile phone—is increasing. The additional screens are actually complementary. They are building on top of TV usage; they are not cannibalizing each other. We do see more simultaneous use: when people are on the Internet, they are also watching TV, and vice versa. However, the actual amount of viewing of video online and on phones is still relatively small; they are just growing at a faster pace. The average time spent watching video online per month is 3 hours and 11 minutes, while watching TV in the home is 141 hours and 3 minutes per user. So 99 percent of the viewing is still on the big screen.

 

However, younger viewers certainly spend time with more screens, but everybody goes to the best screen available. So what’s the best screen available when you want to watch video when you want it? It’s wherever you are, and if that’s at home, if that’s at work, if that’s on the go, it’s going to be a different screen. The fact that viewers have choices in terms of time-shifting at home, and place-shifting on different screens, has actually meant that people consume more video, not less. And having that control is a big deal to people.

 

WS:How are viewers using DVRs?

WHITING:About 30 percent of the homes in the U.S. now have a DVR, and that has contributed more viewing to many of the most popular shows. We Follow @ up to seven days [after the original air date] for additional viewing. In a significant number of the cases, that contributes a lot of viewing back to those programs, although the majority of the time-shifting happens within 24 hours. So it’s more about the convenience of watching it a little bit later, and a lot of it happens virtually the same day, just later—instead of watching at 9 p.m. you watch at 10:30 p.m.

 

One of the things that a lot of people anticipated was that folks would stop viewing commercials, but in all the research we are doing, even in the newer homes with DVRs, we are seeing that 40 percent of the commercials are still viewed in the same way they always were, even with the DVR. And that is a surprising thing to many people.

 

There are a lot of interesting trends we are seeing, like the average number of episodes that people are watching in a series now has gone up. And if you are a producer or a programmer, that’s a pretty significant development. For example, on average, for a weekly dramatic series, people watched two out of four episodes. Now it’s more than three episodes, and that doesn’t include the online viewing. So what we surmise, with the DVR and with that convenience, you are looking at more of the programs and you are more engaged, because these are things you are making a decision and a choice about.

 

WS:How has the Three Screen Report been received?

WHITING:It’s been well received. We created it based upon a series of conversations we had with senior clients, who suggested it would be really helpful to have all this information in one place and to be able to track these trends simultaneously. But it was always one step in a path, and so all of the plans we have behind that, which are measuring all three screens individually and then measuring across all three screens, have always been linked to the release of this report. Since we launched the report, over a year ago, we’ve definitely improved how we measure each screen, and there is more and more that we are doing that links simultaneous use. So, for example, if you are watching TV and you are online, we are now measuring that simultaneously in sample homes, so that we really can understand the relationship between the two and how advertisers and programmers might use them more effectively. Clients are now using this data, and there will be a lot more enhancements in the future.