Captivating Connections.

does (screen) size matter?

According to Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB), when it comes to content, consumers aren't so picky about their screen size. This is quite different from research we have seen the past few years, which note that consumers have been increasing their comfort around different sized screens but still had their preferences.

CMB found that "58% of people who viewed programming on a tablet did so in their homes -- and of these, 63% did so even though the program they were watching was available on their televisions." Meanwhile, while "74% of consumers ages 16-29 had watched programming online, 39% of consumers 50-75 had also watched a television program or movie online. And their preferred method of watching such programming is either through a network Web site (27%) or Netflix (24%). Only 12% of consumers said they watched through their TV provider’s Web portal (such as Comcast’s Xfinity.com)."

What does this mean? Peter Fondulas, founder of Fondulas Strategic Research, which worked on the project with CMB, explains that “the big media companies have been comforted in this notion that the biggest available screen is always going to win in any situation. That may have been true a while ago, but people have become more open to devices and may even prefer [smaller screens] in some situations.”

What do you think?

young people love their content, but not always on a TV.

The New York Times took a look this AM at a not-so-new phenominon (maybe it just feels that way to me because I'm the topic's age. or maybe I'm just way too entrenched in this research) re: how young people consumer content.

Rectifying the idea that TV is America's "#1 pastime" with the fact that youth ages 12-34 are spending less time in front of physical TV sets, the article looks at new research by Nielsen, uncovering a divide between how those 35+ and those 34 and under consumer content.

So, what'd they find?

"The divide along a demographic line reveals the effect of Internet videos, social networks, mobile phones and video games — in short, all the alternatives to the television set that are taking up growing slices of the American attention span. Young people are still watching the same shows, but they are streaming them on computers and phones to a greater degree than their parents or grandparents do."

The result can be scary for brands and content providers (especially TV networks), resulting in a lot of scrambling, such as "a growing sense of urgency within the industry to make online and mobile viewing as measurable as traditional couch-bound viewing. Ad-buying agencies are gradually moving some client money to the Web to reach the 20- and 30-somethings who are becoming harder to reach with traditional television."

youtube & disney make magic.

Disney & YouTube are coming together for an interesting partnership:

"The deal, set to be announced on Monday, is small on its surface: Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily.

But the alliance is striking because of what it tacitly acknowledges about each company’s weaknesses.

Disney, currently working on yet another overhaul of its Web site, is conceding that its own brand is not a powerful enough draw among children looking for video online; YouTube is viewed as being cooler.

So in a reversal of a go-it-alone Web strategy, Disney will go fishing for youngsters on YouTube in addition to making YouTube a prominent part of its own site — something that the company hopes will coax children to stay longer."

the actual state of social media.

Nielsen has come out with their State of the Media: The Social Media Report, giving you the rundown of the real state of social media in the lives of consumers.

What did they find? 

- Social media accounts for 22.5% of the time that we (Americans) spend online (compared with 9.8% for online games & 7.6% for e-mail).

- Facebook rules. In the month of May, Americans spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook.com from their home & work computers (up 6% from the 50.6 billion minutes spent in May 2010). After Facebook (during May 2011) was Blogger (at 723.8 million minutes), Tumblr (at 623.5 million minutes), Twitter (at 565.2 million minutes), and LinkedIn (at 325.7 million minutes).

- More women than men watch video clips on blogs and social networks.

- More men than women stream more videos and spend more time watching them.

 

what & how netflix and hulu users are watching.

We know all know that online video is a  major trend, but what is the reality?

"According to a recent Nielsen survey, the majority of Netflix users report watching on a TV screen. In fact, half of all Netflix users connect via a game console (Wii, PS3 or Xbox Live).

Conversely for Hulu, watching directly on a computer is the dominant way consumers connect. Eighty-nine percent of Hulu users watch directly on a computer, while 42 percent of Netflix users report watching on their computers.

One-fifth of Hulu users and 14 percent of Netflix users also report that they stream by connecting their computer to the TV. Other over-the-top, Internet-enabled devices, such as Roku Box, Google TV and Apple TV, were also cited as means for connecting with Hulu and Netflix. Respondents were able to select more than one viewing method to best reflect their viewing habits.

the migration of video watching.

According to a recent Frank N. Magid Associates study sponsored by Metacafe, "consumer behavior continues to integrate more video in everyday life. It turns out that 23% of survey respondents watch daily, up from 13% in 2010. Overall, 57% of Internet users watch online videos weekly, up from 50% last year."

So, who do you think is the heaviest video viewer? Men!

"Males ages 18 to 34 watch 7.8 hours of online video weekly, compared with 5.6 hours per week among all viewers ages 8 to 64. Many participants in the survey expect to watch 10% more online video within the next year."

The driver of this trend? Emerging technology!

"Emerging technologies have begun to show promise when it comes to connecting with entertainment and video content. About 30% of online view viewers watch content on a mobile phone, Internet-connected television or wireless tablet.

Internet TV continues to grow in acceptance, with 25% of online video viewers accessing the Internet through their TV set and an additional 34% interested in hooking in at a later time, according to the Frank N. Magid study.

About 158.1 million U.S. Internet users will download or stream video at least monthly via any device in 2011, representing 68.2% of Web users -- up to 76% by 2015, according to eMarketer."

kids & media usage in 1993 vs. 2011 (or why having kids scares me).

Nielsen has compared media usage for kids ages 12-17, and it's scary! According to Nielsen...

"Kids Today…

• Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers: On average, mobile subscribers ages 12-17 watched 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month in Q4 2010, compared to 4 hours 20 minutes for the general population.
• Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders: More than half (58%) surveyed in September 2010 said they “always” or “sometimes” look at mobile ads.
• Out-Text All Other Age Groups: In Q1 2011, teens 13-17 sent an average of 3,364 mobile texts per month, more than doubling the rate of the next most active texting demo, 18-24 year olds (1,640 texts per month).
• Talk Less on the Phone: Besides seniors 65-plus, teens talk the least on their phones, talking an average of 515 minutes per month in Q1 2011 versus more than 750 minutes among 18-24 year olds.
• Grew Up in the Age of Social Media—and It Shows: While they make up just 7.4 percent of those using social networks, 78.7 percent of 12-17 year olds visited social networks or blogs.
• Watch Less TV than the General Population: The average American watched 34 hours 39 minutes of TV per week in Q4 2010, a year-over-year increase of two minutes. Teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV on average (23 hours 41 minutes per week).
• Spend Less Time on their Computers: American 18 year olds averaged 39 hours, 50 minutes online from their home computers, of which 5 hours, 26 minutes was spent streaming online video."

Wow. When I have a kid will the hospital administer it an iPad in the delivery room??

those who stream a lot of video may be watching less TV.

According to Nielsen, "streaming of Internet video may come at the expense of some traditional TV viewing, especially among young TV/video users."

Their latest report, "State of the Media: Cross Platform Report," claims that "the new trend among TV and Internet homes shows the lightest traditional television users streaming significantly more Internet video via their computers, and the heaviest streamers under-indexing for traditional TV viewership. This behavior is led by those ages 18-34."

This is big, especially since "the typical research view had been that the heaviest TV/media consumers are big users across all services and platforms. Previous research has shown, for example, that TV viewing and usage did not suffer because of new platforms like the Internet."

online video vs TV ads: who fares better?

If you guessed online video ads, you're right! 

"Viewers pay more attention to online video ads than to traditional TV commercials and also recall them better, according to new research that utilized Affectiva's facial tracking algorithms and second-by-second biometric modeling of cognition, excitement and stress levels.

The research measured the reactions of 48 viewers watching one hour of programming in Interpublic Group's West Coast IPG Media Lab.

Conducted by the Media Lab during March in conjunction with video ad network YuMe, the study determined that on average, online viewers pay more attention to the screen than do traditional TV viewers -- and the greater attention levels carry over to advertising.

Online video ads received 18.3% more viewer attention in the study than TV commercials -- a much higher disparity than the 8.5% greater viewer attention garnered by online video content over TV content.

This was largely due to the finding that when transitioning from program content to ads, the attention of TV viewers dropped off three times faster than that of online viewers.

While fast-forwarded ads, such as those recorded on a DVR, were partly to blame, IPG and YuMe found a much larger cause to be 'the familiar cadence of TV content.' Conversely, the study found that 'systemic disruption' caused by online video's 'unpredictable ad cadence and forced, short bursts of video ads (rather than predictable ad pods) appears to help decrease ad avoidance behaviors without causing consumer backlash...'

In fact, DVR users were found to pay higher-than-normal attention to commercials because they were concentrating on skipping them -- but their later recall was actually lower. 'DVR users were 38% less likely to correctly recall the brand for any TV ad they saw, aided or unaided, compared to non-DVR users,' the study found.

For TV viewers overall, paying attention during commercials had no effect on whether they could or could not remember them or recall them unaided. And those who recalled ads when aided actually had below-average attention scores. But online viewers who paid attention to ads later recalled them, with online video ad recall twice as high as TV ad recall -- 'offering proof that recall and attention correlate,'according to IPG and YuMe.

Both TV and online video content had plenty of competition from other media during the study, most notably smartphones. The 48 viewers studied had been surveyed a week earlier to determine how they normally watch TV, then told to bring with them what they needed to recreate their 'normal' TV viewing experience."

Fact: 1/3rd of urban media consumers watch TV on non-traditional platforms.

According to Horowitz Associates, nontraditional media consumption is having a major surge. Their research claims that "31% of city consumers watch TV content on computer/laptops, mobile devices or tablets, or streamed from the Internet to the TV through so-called 'over the top' devices, such as Apple TV, Xbox or blu-ray DVD players.

Horowitz says those who use alternative platforms for TV spend, on average, 15% of their video time on platforms other than traditional TV -- in addition to time spent viewing other traditional digital TV platforms: DVRs and video-on-demand services.

Looking specifically at individual multicultural urban consumers, the new study says 41% of Asians watch TV content on alternative platforms at least weekly; 37% for Latinos; and 36% for blacks. This is versus 25% for whites.

Just observing one alternative device -- computers/laptops -- 35% of Asians report watching TV on them weekly, compared to 22% for Latinos; 17%, blacks; and 15% for whites."