Secondly, and related to that there is the notion of social TV – people talking live and online about what’s on the television.

In fact, a Nielsen study shows it’s tablet owners in particular who have their devices open while the box is blaring away in the background.   42% of tablet owners, most of which are still iPad owners , use their device in front of the TV every day.

For smartphone owners the % is 40%, whereas owners of ereaders such as the Kindle are the least distracted, with only 14% reading the ereader and simultaneously watching TV every day.

And what are tablet users doing?   60% are reading their emails while a programme is on.   However, 42% of men and 48% of women are on social networks. Significantly, one in five even looked up information related to an ad.

Who says social media spells the death of TV advertising?  As that last stat (and plenty of case studies) shows, well crafted ads with social elements can even go a lot further thanks to social channels.

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• 40 percent of people use their tablets and smartphones while watching TV (intomobile.com)
• What TV viewers are doing on their tablets, smartphones (lostremote.com)
• Tablets, smartphones distracting TV watchers (survey) (zdnet.com)

Here’s one – via Nielsen and McKinsey.  There is a direct correlation between an increase in social buzz and TV ratings.

The chart is fairly self explanatory, an increase in buzz at certain periods of a TV series in turn equates to a 1% ratings increase.

As this is a US study, that can translate into millions of viewers (even here in the UK, an uplift of 1% would be substantial).   Millions of viewers who are then also exposed to the advertising sold within that show.

Perhaps not surprisingly, 18-34 year olds are most engaged and responsible for bringing in new viewers.   Nielsen tells us that men aged 50+ are least interested about what is being said online.

That’s an interesting point, and ties into an earlier Comscore study in Europe showing that while women in their 40s and 50s are highly engaged in social networks, 50+ men are increasingly being left behind.

Finally, think this finding is exclusive to TV and entertainment?    In the US, Jeep found that not only could social media drive sales.  It could predict them.  

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• How social networking is reviving communal TV viewing (thenextweb.com)

Previous results showed that TV is still far in front with the Internet a  distant second and newspapers nowhere to be seen.   But for 18-25 year olds things were somewhat different.   Mobile phones and not PCs+Internet were in second place.   TV was in front, but not by much.

The latest results have changed and an important milestone has been crossed:

TV remains the most-missed media for UK adults as a whole, although this has decreased from 50% in 2009 to 44% in 2010.   But for the first time, adults aged 16-24 mention using a mobile phone (28%) and using the internet (26%) ahead of watching television (23%).     Result – TV only campaigns are increasingly leaving consumers behind, and if you haven’t got a mobile element you are missing a lot of young adults completely.

Trust in social media increases
Another key stat: Trust in information relayed via social media and online media as a whole has increased.

34% trust what they read in newspapers, while 59% trust what they read on news websites.  Related to that, as another study showed, online articles command more attention than their print equivalents.

However at the same time, more consumers now trust rather than distrust what they see on social networks – 36% vs 33%.   That trust is most likely to be highest among women, 16-35 year olds and ‘AB’ higher earners.

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In fact according to eMarketer (via Techcrunch), every day Americans now spend more than 2x as long on their mobiles (50 mins) as they do reading magazines (20 mins).   Indeed, as much time is spent using mobile devices as reading newspapers (30 mins) and magazines (20 mins) combined.

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The other week I talked about Nielsen figures showing that in the US at least, the older you are the more TV you watch.   However, that doesn’t mean that the television is being abandoned completely.

A study from Frank Magid Associates shows that only 1% of digital TV subscribers in the US have cancelled their subscriptions because they get everything that they want online (via MediaPost). In fact, only 2.5% of US media consumers use the Internet exclusively for video content.

Indeed, people who watch video via the Web seem to be entertainment junkies who indulge through a variety of different platforms.  Frank Magid associates says that “consumers using the greatest number of alternative platforms also tend to spend the most money on traditional subscription services.”

As a result, online video consumers are not so-called cord cutters.   Instead they see the Web as one element of their overall TV experience.

Earlier this year the UK regulatory authority Ofcom found that the most popular YouTube channels were variations of mainstream media properties.   And then there is the much talked about return of appointment or social TV where laptops or iPhones are used side by side with the television set to share the experience with a wider online audience of friends.

Image – From dhammza

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• Web TV viewers are ‘cord keepers’ and not cutters (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)

For example, the other day GigaOm reported on a Nielsen study done in TV-land: The United States.   Nielsen shows that US TV viewers watched less in Q2 2010 compared to the previous quarter, but that’s a stat that can be explained away by seasonal factors.   What’s more interesting is when you look at TV time by age group.

Certainly in the pre Internet 1980s, teens were the prime TV audience.   Now at 103:46 hours:minutes a month, 12-17 year olds watch less TV than any other age group.   Similarly, 18-24 year olds (113:54) tune in for a significantly shorter period of time than other adults.   In fact, Nielsen’s stats show that the older you are, the more TV you watch with people who are 65+ watching almost 200 hours.

GigaOm comments, “it’s not a good sign for TV programmers and cable companies, which are gradually seeing their viewers getting older.”

Some additional stats from both the UK and US that support this trend:

1 – The UK’s Ofcom Communications Markets Report asks consumers about their most essential media.   Looking at which one piece of media they would miss the most, 50% of all UK consumers chose TV.   However, for the under 25s that dropped to 36%.

2 - Similarly, according to Pew Research, 53% of US adults aged 65+ consider their TV set an essential item, compared to 29% of 18-29 year olds.

A lot of that time spent away from the TV set is of course spent online.   But there is also some evidence to show that social networks could be slowly bringing people back to the television set.

Last week Fastcompany had a piece on Twitter bringing back “appointment TV” – live events that you want to share with your friends via social media (with your laptop or phone open beside you).   And Motorola’s research out this week says that 42% of TV viewers have exchanged e-mails, had IM chats or used social media to talk about a TV programme at the same time they were viewing it, while 22% said that social media + TV “multitasking” was a regular feature of their television experience.

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• Nielsen: Viewers Watched Less TV Per Month In Q2 (nytimes.com)
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• Web TV viewers are ‘cord keepers’ and not cutters (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)

Does watching online content make you less likely to watch ordinary TV?   Not at all, says metrics group Nielsen (via Hollywood Reporter) and the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), which say that Web TV viewers are if anything “cord keepers” rather than cutters.

Nielsen surveyed a group of Americans that watch at least some TV or movies via the Internet on their TV sets.    The research showed that 84% were watching as much, if not more, scheduled TV.   And discovering a programme on the Web can then often result in you watching it via the normal means on scheduled TV – this was the case for 53% of respondents.

CTAM says that these results show how the Internet is often used to enhance someone’s enjoyment of a particular show, and not replace it with something else.   It also links into stats that show that the most popular YouTube channels are more often than not variations of what you will see on TV anyway.   According to Ofcom, in the UK that includes BBC Worldwide, X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – all mainstream broadcast properties.

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I can’t readily find stats that show the % that visit what you might call ‘hard news’ sites, but according to Pew, certainly in the US 61% of Americans get news (which I assume includes entertainment news) online.

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US users are far more likely to access a social network site or blog (21.3% vs 17% for Japan and 14.7% for Europe).  While on the other hand, Europeans lead when it comes to listening to music (thanks Spotify!), capturing video (a quarter of us do so apparently) and playing games.

Two stats however that show how mobile networks and usage is further along the curve in Japan.   First of all, mobile TV never really caught on in Western Europe or the US – Comscore shows that around 5% in Europe and the US either watch TV and / or video on their phones…which means this % watch video as I can’t think of anyone I know who uses their mobile as a portable television.    In Japan however the figure is one in five (22%).

Secondly, browser and application use is much higher in Japan than in Europe or the US.   In Japan, almost 6/10 use mobile browsers compared to 1/3 in the US and 1/4 in Europe.   So for Japanese users at least, the mobile handset really is on the way to becoming their primary Internet device.

Related articles

• comScore: Comparative Report on Mobile Usage in Japan, United States and Europe (technokitten.blogspot.com)
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The results made me think of a series of posts penned by Adam Ferrier of Naked Australia, all about how emotional advertising that seeks to make a connection with the audience is often over-rated, and really – though it might not be pretty or win awards – more of an emphasis should be on some sort of A to B action.

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