It just takes one of Nielsen’s periodic counts of how digital entertainment is consumed by the average US family and all the world’s assumptions are apparently turned on their heads.
But a closer look at what the Nielsen data does is confirm our worse suspicions that television and other video entertainment is fragmenting out of control.
The Nielsen figures are supposed to get at the video and TV usage across all ‘three screens’ ‘ TV, the internet and mobile devices. Nielsen wants us to conclude that Americans are watching more TV than ever, that’s because it is paid, mostly by advertising agencies and broadcasters, to reach those conclusions. So at first glance it is all good news. People are watching more TV, spending more time on the internet watching video, and have even begun watching TV on their handsets, finally. But then if you read the details the picture starts to skew.
The rise to watching over 127 hours of TV a month on average includes the time spent watching timeshifted TV, but of course when you watch more time shifted TV, and fast forward through the adverts, you see more programs in less time. Nielsen will put a viewing of a one hour program down as an hour’s viewing, even if it was consumed in just over 35 minutes. And that’s going to be a consistent difficultly here. Eventually the 121 hours of broadcast viewing that US consumers had last year will turn into first 127 hours and then to 200 hours of timeshifted viewing, without the ads. So in an advertising auction that 200 hours is worth less, not more, than the 121 hours of 2007 broadcast viewing. But naturally the appearance will be broadcast viewing up, and timeshifted viewing up a lot.
The time on the internet is definitely going up, and that’s because people are spending more of their time in front of a PC. Now of course some of this will be people watching TV programs which they might say they have watched on the TV. While the difference between total monthly internet usage and total monthly internet video usage is so great, that won’t produce a problem in the figures just yet, but once people catch up their TV series on the go on a portable device, and do this often, then this is likely to become a serious case of double counting.
The internet video number that Nielsen gives is only the time spent watching video on the internet, and one of the reasons that has become noticeable is because some people watch internet videos on their phones and that’s counted too where they were either downloaded from the internet originally or where they use the mobile internet.
The fact that people watching video on a mobile phone is a higher figure than this, is because most good video is either proper broadcast mobile TV or it comes from the operator’s portal, not from the internet, and already, with the impoverished offerings the US has for mobile TV, that number is around 10 minutes per working day. However it must be understood that these last figures are limited to the base of people that actually watch video on mobile phones, it is not the average of all of the people that Nielsen sampled, against the total time watched, this is how long, on average, those who watch mobile TV spent doing it, which is different.
Nielsen said about the report that ‘the US TV landscape is growing increasingly more complex and digital. As of May 2008, more than 65% of US homes receive digital cable and satellite combined. These digital TV homes receive nearly 160 channels. In addition, 25% and 35% of US homes have DVR and Video on Demand respectively.
“Commercial television is alive and well – growing 1% year over year – despite the rapid adoption of other platforms,” said John Burbank, chief marketing officer for The Nielsen Company. “Moreover, timeshifting represents less than 5% of total viewing.”
These are poor messages for a company usually known for its honesty and refusal to ignore difficult conditions. Commercial TV is in trouble from the internet and later will be from cellular advertising, and the shifts in viewing habits mean that there will have to be a slimming of the Nielsen customer base, and a transition to other mediums. Timeshifting is eating more and more into the broadcast advertising base and the Nielsen clients are not well served by being told the good news that they can ignore it, because it quite simply isn’t true.