SUMMARY: This article illustrates how a multi-platform media brand like CNN is using fusion data to create integrated advertising opportunities across its platforms by quantifying each platform’s total and incremental reach on top of their TV audience for the news category.

Divided attention
Technological advances are helping to form the dynamics between consumers and media companies. The menu of media platforms has grown to include platforms like the Internet, mobile, and social media. These new media vehicles are not replacing old media; rather, they are dividing consumers’ attention among multiple media touch points and driving media companies to actively develop content and advertising strategies that optimize these shifts in behaviors. While most media companies are striving for cross-platform success from both TV and the Internet, only a handful of networks get incremental lift from their online properties today, which is vital to increasing overall market share.

Tracking your cross-platform footprint
The industry finally has data to better capture where there is incremental lift—the data is based on actual behavior, not self-reported survey usage. Through a statistical matching process, Nielsen’s TV/Internet fusion links television audience information from the National People Meter Panel with Internet usage from the Nielsen Online NetView Panel.

The fusion analysis allows media companies to evaluate their media genre/category and uncover how that company’s TV and Internet components affect their audience interaction with their media brand.

News you can use
Focusing on the News genre media footprint, Nielsen’s analysis identified people who consumed News information via TV only, Internet only and both TV and Internet. News TV is made up of all News genre available from broadcast to cable. The News websites grouping consist of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC digital Networks, AOL News and Yahoo News.

In the month analyzed, approximately 143 million people consumed News information through the identified media sources as follows:

• 81 million accessed news on TV only
• 60 million accessed news on both TV and online
• 1.5 million accessed news online only

The cross-platform audience portion—classified by CNN as “Integrators”—is a highly desirable audience not only because of the size, but also due to their time spent with the category. These category Integrators spent nearly 12 hours each month consuming news content on TV and online — nearly 30% more than people who only consume news on TV.

Who are the news media integrators?
There exists the ongoing debate about whether emerging media cannibalize or complete existing media, and this new fusion data provides insight to the relationship between the various media.

A key finding from the study revealed that consuming news on multiple platforms is not a zero-sum game. The average number of days each network is viewed, and the number of days each network website is visited, is greater among people who use both platforms than people who only view news on TV or people who only consume news online.

Having this integrated audience—one that accesses content on TV, online and via other platforms—has benefits both to the media company in terms of engagement and to the advertiser in terms of being able to use these important platforms within the halo that the media brand provides.

Among the three news brands identified, CNN has a distinct advantage over Fox News Channel and MSNBC in terms of the size of their integrated audience and the engagement, or number of minutes consumed on TV and online.

Each day, CNN Integrators consume 154 million minutes of the CNN brand on TV and online—nearly double the amount of minutes consumed to Fox News among Fox News Integrators, and 50% more than the amount of minutes consumed to MSNBC among MSNBC Integrators.

Actionable results
By examining the cross-platform footprint, media companies can better develop and cross-promote their content on TV and online optimizing their brand reach to this growing Integrator segment. Regardless of the category, this analysis serves as a tool for media companies to: 1) maintain existing brand loyal Integrators, 2) understand which platform provides the most growth potential from multi-platform consumers, and 3) help to develop strategies to transition Integrators who are less brand loyal to one of their brand platforms.

As of Q3 2008, the average American watched approximately 142 hours of TV per month — five hours more than they watched in a typical month during the same period a year ago.

Americans who used the Internet were online 27 hours a month, and people who used a mobile phone spent 3 hours a month watching mobile video.

Men were more likely than women to watch via mobile phone, while women were more likely then men to watch video online.

DVR usage was up significantly (52.5%) in Q3 2008, compared with Q3 2007.  Americans spent more than six hours per month watching timeshifted TV — double the amount of time they spent watching video online.  The only exception: 18-24 year-olds, who consumed more video online (four hours, 48 minutes) than via DVR (four hours, 36 minutes).

During the 2007-08 television season, the average U.S. household took in eight hours and 18 minutes of TV per day, a record high since Nielsen started measuring television in the 1950’s.

“TV use is at an all-time high, yet people are also using the Internet more often — 31% of which is happening simultaneously,” Susan Whiting, vice chairperson, Nielsen, noted.

Download the report.

Learn more about viewing across the “three screens” – view Manish Bhatia, of Nielsen, addressing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s December 2008 forum.