Related: TVB Launching Political Advocacy Campaign on Power of Local TV Advertising
Live TV is still the top way to consume video, according to Nielsen’s fourth-quarter 2015 Local Watch Report. Released Wednesday, the report looks at viewing habits in local TV and the impact SVOD, smart TVs and mobile devices have had on markets in addition to analyzing young voters and their media behavior.
Adults 25-54 watch over three hours of live TV a day in 24 of the top 25 DMAs, with another 30-plus minutes viewing time-shifted TV and more than seven minutes consuming on multimedia devices.
With nearly six hours of total viewing, including more than 4.5 hours of live TV, Cleveland watches the most television of any DMA.
Smartphone use is also on the rise. Smartphone penetration in the U.S. is at 82%; Dallas leads the top 25 DMAs at 89%. Miami’s smartphone penetration among African-Americans, at 97%, is the highest, while Sacramento leads with Hispanics at 89%.
Among the top 25 DMAs, Washington, D.C. has the highest smart TV penetration (28%), smartphone mobile video views (39%), tablet penetration (68%) and SVOD penetration (59%).
The 2016 election is expected to net $4 billion in TV ad spending, which is no surprise considering over three-quarters of the elusive young voters watch broadcast TV on a weekly basis and nearly half watch the local news.
Registered voters 18-34 make up over one-quarter of all registered voters in their district. And they consume local content. One-quarter of those young voters are more likely to have gone on a broadcast media website in the past month, while nearly one-third consider social networking to be an important tool to discover news. In addition, young voters are on-the-go; they are 26% more likely to download a medi app.
