Report: Video Consumption Rises Through Multitasking

Written by Ryan Lawler

Wednesday, September 2. 2009 at 03:40 PM EDT 1 comment

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U.S. media consumption continues to grow, due primarily to more viewers consuming both TV and Internet content at the same time, according to recent research from The Nielsen Co.

Nielsen's most recent A2/M2 Three Screen Report shows a slight increase in the amount of television that consumers are watching, despite ever-rising Internet usage in the home. The amount of time U.S. consumers spent watching TV rose 1.5 percent, to more than 141 hours a month in the second quarter.

The average amount of time users spent on the Internet decreased slightly -- to an average of 26 hours and 15 minutes a month -- and the number of home Internet users increased nearly 20 percent year-over-year, to 191 million.

While consumption of most forms of media tracked by the report -- TV, timeshifted TV, and Internet -- were down slightly on a sequential basis in the quarter (due most likely to it being summer and so darn nice outside), there's a clear trend of overall growth in media consumption year-over-year.

And there's a clear shift in consumer behavior to consuming the media they want when and where they want, often consuming multiple media sources simultaneously.

With 30 percent of Americans now having access to digital video recorders (DVRs), the amount of time-shifted TV U.S. consumers watch also continues to rise, accounting for seven hours and 16 minutes per month. That's up an hour and 10 minutes, or nearly 20 percent, from the year before.

The report also highlights growing consumer Internet usage while watching television -- a behavior that is driving consumption growth on both ends. More than half of Americans with Internet access at home, 57 percent, cop to watching TV while on the Internet at least once a month.

The amount of time spent both activities simultaneously accounts for about two hours and 39 minutes a month, which represents 30 percent of all consumer Internet time, but only 3 percent of the time users spend watching TV.

Internet video consumption continues to grow, with the average amount of time viewers spend watching online video increasing a full hour year-over-year. U.S. consumers watched three hours and 11 minutes of online video per month on average in the second quarter, compared to two hours and 12 minutes the year before.

Despite the increase in the amount of premium, long-form video programming, short-form and user-generated video keeps going strong. Nielsen reports that short-form video clips made up about 83 percent of all online video viewing in May.