Fourteen percent of home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access browsed the web at least once during the big game, up slightly from last year’s 12%. Additionally, time spent on line for those multitaskers was up from 24 minutes last year to 29 minutes with much of that concurrent time was spent on social networks.

Overall, Google and Facebook were the most visited domains while watching the game. Preliminary analysis of Nielsen’s single-source measurement of Internet and TV, in Convergence Panel and select National People Meter homes, shows that 36% of simultaneous users visited Google.com and 34% visited Facebook.com. Facebook, which was visited during the game by 1 in 20 of all at-home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access, led the most-visited sites in terms of simultaneous time spent, averaging 19 minutes per user.

The growth of simultaneous use, particularly on sites such as Google and Facebook, demonstrates the growing importance of Web interactivity in the television viewing experience. For some time, Nielsen has been discussing and gearing our audience measurement towards how this interactivity could make a positive impact on live television viewership. We expect to see this trend continue to manifest itself in the Winter Olympics and this summer’s FIFA World Cup Soccer event.

• Download  information on Nielsen’s simultaneous measurement of TV and Internet.

Sports fans who watched both ESPN and used ESPN.com spent 27% more time watching ESPN TV than TV-only users — and 50% more time using ESPN.com than Internet-only viewers, according to a recent study of ESPN fans’ cross-platform media consumption habits by Nielsen Connections.

Pete Doe, Managing Director, Nielsen Connections, and Glenn Enoch, Vice President, Audience Research, ESPN, reported the findings of that research in the September issue of Nielsen’s “Consumer Insight” online newsletter.

Overall, 123 million people accessed ESPN on TV and another 21 million visited ESPN.com in March 2008, according to Nielsen.  Among households with either TV or Internet access, 84% of users who accessed ESPN content via TV, 10% used both Internet and TV, and 6% used ESPN.com exclusively, Nielsen found. 

Nielsen’s custom research for ESPN used TV/Internet data fusion techniques, paired with Nielsen’s single-source Convergence Panel, to track how ESPN fans access the network’s offerings via TV and the Web. 

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Learn more about how Nielsen tracks media consumption across the three screens: TV, Internet, and Mobile.