Streaming video on the rise but can't touch TV

Jake Widman
Friday, 22 May 2009 00:17

Your IT - Home IT

According to the Neilsen Company, 13 percent more people are watching Internet video this year than last, but TV still accounts for 99 percent of Americans' video consumption.

The company's Three Screen Report (PDF) for the first quarter of 2009 found that 131 million Americans reported watching video on the internet during that period, compared with 116 million for the same period last year.

The average time spent per month on Internet video rose from nearly two hours to a full three.

Even more dramatic, though, was the increase in video consumption on mobile phones. Thirteen and a half million viewers reported watching video on a phone, a 52.2 percent increase from last year's 8.8 million for the same period.

And those viewers spent even more time watching than the Internet viewers did: more than three and a half hours. Much of the difference is probably explained by the fact that mobile video consumption includes content downloaded to and stored on the phones, not just streamed.

TV still rules Americans' viewing habits, though. The average viewer watches more than 153 hours of TV at home per month.

Not suprisingly, Internet and mobile video consumption skews somewhat young: adults aged 18-24 watch about five hours online per month, compared to four and a half hours for those aged 25-34 and so on down to less than an hour and a half for those aged 65 and up.

And on phones, it's the teenagers leading the way, with those aged 13-17 watching six and a half hours per month, almost twice as much as the number-two age group.