The
Nielsen Company’s new TV/Internet Convergence Panel, which electronically measures
both television and Internet usage in the same homes, has found that television viewing
and online video streaming are complementary activities.

According to the convergence panel, the heaviest users of the Internet are also among
the heaviest viewers of television: the top fifth of Internet users spend more than
250 minutes per day watching television, compared to 220 minutes of television viewing
by people who do not use the Internet at all.

Nielsen found that the reverse is true as well — the lowest consumers of television
have the lowest usage levels for the Internet.

Nielsen also found that nearly 31 percent of in-home Internet activity takes place
while the user is watching television, demonstrating that there is a significant amount
of simultaneous Internet and television usage. Conversely, about 4 percent of television
viewing occurs when the consumer is also using the Internet.

The Nielsen TV/Internet Convergence Panel, which launched earlier this month, is the
first panel to use Nielsen technology and methodology to directly measure the interaction
between TV and Internet by the same people in the same household. The sample consists
of nearly 3000 people in more than 1000 households who were either previously part
of Nielsen’s live national TV sample and have agreed to continue to be monitored by
Nielsen, or new homes installed specifically for convergence research.

Television viewing and Internet usage are collected in the panel using Nielsen’s electronic
People Meter and downloadable NetSight meter software. The panel was created as part
of Nielsen’s Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) initiative, which aims to
measure video across a variety of media platforms.

Other findings from Nielsen’s TV/Internet Convergence Panel:

• Roughly 50% of the Convergence Panel panelists had viewed some streaming content online.
  The demos streaming the most included Female Teens (82%), Male Teens (64%), Men 18-34
  (57%) and Men 35-54 (55%).
• Nearly 60% of panelists and more than 80% of people who watched TV and used the Internet
  that month had simultaneous sessions — watching TV and being online at the same minute.
  This group tends to be very heavy users of both TV and Internet.
• Teens are the most likely demographic to have simultaneous TV/Internet usage, but
  Adults 35-54 have the most simultaneous usage minutes.

Source:
Report: TV Viewing and Internet Use Are Complementary