Report: TV ‘Overwhelming Winner’ in Garnering Video Attention

NEW YORK: A new report finds that U.S. consumers devote four times more attention to multiscreen TV than to all activity on the four main Internet portals, YouTube and Facebook combined.

The Get Real: Video Advertising 2015 report from the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau examined the major players in the field of video in the U.S.—multiscreen TV, Google/YouTube, AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Facebook—on the basis of consumer attention. The findings revealed that TV content garners 80 percent of consumer attention within this arena. When TV and YouTube are compared side by side, TV comes out ahead on time spent by a margin of 95 percent to 5 percent. The balance does shift with younger adults 18 to 24, but the difference is still vast, at 88 percent to 12 percent, respectively.

Americans devote as much attention to TV websites and mobile as they do to the four Internet portals, YouTube and Facebook (including mobile) combined. TV websites either lead or have multiple places in the top 5 across the most important content genres online: news, sports, food, kids, weather, comedy, gaming, home, music and entertainment. TV content also fuels top-ranked tablet apps in the 11 largest content categories.

Based on metrics from Nielsen and comScore in Q4, the report shows that the TV/four portals/YouTube/Facebook attention opportunity is 175 hours per month. Of the 175 hours, 80 percent is spent with multiscreen TV content, while 20 percent is spent on all Internet activity (search, social, mobile, e-mail and video) on the four major portals, YouTube and Facebook combined.

“There’s an attention paradox in video—you could call it Attention Definition Disorder,” said Sean Cunningham, the CEO of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau. “The ad industry has been distracted into paying less attention to what consumers are focusing the bulk of their attention on. Consumers are clearly focused on multiscreen TV content—professionally produced, ad-worthy content with a mass audience and infinite targeting opportunities.”

“Smart marketers will clarify their definition of Internet video as an extension of a multiscreen TV buy,” said Cunningham. “Using video to sell more stuff isn’t about how many places you can technically ‘reach’ people for 1 to 2 seconds; and it’s not about how many splintered impressions you can aggregate. It’s about how much time and attention you can amass with audiences committed to the same content.”