12% of Viewers Keep One Eye on the Super Bowl, One Eye on the Web

Nielsen Wire — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:57:20 +0000

Nielsen found that many Super Bowl viewers like to keep one eye on their computer screens during the game. A study of simultaneous TV and Internet usage found that 12% of Super Bowl viewers last year also spent time on the web, at an average of 24 minutes per user.

Nielsen found that simultaneous users were most engaged in general interest, e-mail, and online social networks. Sports sites, which might be more directly associated with the game itself, were visited by 18% of simultaneous users.

TOP WEBSITE CATEGORIES VISITED BY SUPER BOWL VIEWERS (2/1/09, 6pm to 11pm ET)
RANK	Category	% of Simultaneous Users	Simultaneous Mins. Per User
1	General Interest Portals & Communities**	54.20%	2.2
2	Search	35.90%	2.5
3	Member Communities	32.70%	16.1
4	E-mail	30.10%	3.9
5	Current Events & Global News	18.30%	3.2
Source: The Nielsen Company **“General Interest”is defined as portals & community sites – generally main network homepages – that appeal to a wide variety of web users and direct them to more specific subcategories and channels. Examples include Google.com, Yahoo.com, and AOL.com NOTE: Data derived from small sample base sizes and not subject to scientific conclusions.

Almost a quarter of simultaneous users spent some time during the game on Facebook. Those users spent an average of 15 minutes on the site. Google and Yahoo! Mail were also popular destinations for Super Bowl viewers.

TOP WEBSITES VISITED BY SUPER BOWL VIEWERS
RANK	Website	% of Simultaneous Users	Simultaneous Mins. Per Person
1	Facebook	23.50%	15.1
2	Google Search	21.60%	2.6
3	Yahoo! Mail	12.40%	3.6
4	MSN Homepage	11.80%	0.9
5	Yahoo! Homepage	11.80%	0.7
Source: The Nielsen Company

Heavy Internet Users Also Watch More TV

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Television viewing and online video streaming go hand in hand — with the heaviest Internet users also watching the most TV, Nielsen reported Friday.

Internet users who rank among the top fifth in terms of time spent online also watch more than 250 minutes of television each day, according to Nielsen. In comparison, people who don’t use the Internet at all watch just 220 minutes of TV per day.

The data comes from Nielsen’s new TV/Internet Convergence Panel, which measures both TV and Internet usage within individual U.S. households. The panel consists of nearly 3,000 people in more than 1,000 households. TV viewing and Internet usage data are collected by Nielsen’s electronic People Meters and NetSight meter software.

Internet and TV “multitasking” is also common among these heavy users, Nielsen found.

Almost one-third of home Internet use (31%) is accompanied by background TV viewing, while about 4% of TV viewing occurs when a consumer is also using the Internet, according to Nielsen.

Overall, more than 80% of people who watched TV and used the Internet in September used both simultaneously.

Teens were the most likely to use TV and Internet together, but adults ages 35 to 54 logged the most simultaneous Internet/TV usage minutes, according to Nielsen.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings by Reuters, the New York Post, the San Jose Mercury News, Media Post, Promo magazine, and TechRadar.com.

Submit questions about Nielsen’s TV/Internet convergence research to Howard Shimmel, who oversees Nielsen’s Convergence Panel, by commenting below.

Nielsen Wire » simultaneous use

12% of Viewers Keep One Eye on the Super Bowl, One Eye on the Web

Heavy Internet Users Also Watch More TV