Video viewing on smartphones jumped during the first quarter, according to Nielsen’s new Comparable Metrics report.
Nielsen is attempting to measure more forms of media consumption. At the same time, it is trying to report that usage in a way that allows clients to make comparisons among media on an apples-to-apples basis.
In the new report, smartphone video had a cumulative audience of 110.1 million adults in the U.S., up from 85.4 million in the year-ago quarter. In the digital world that audience might be reported as unique users. Those users consumed 5.69 billion gross minutes of video, a jump from 3.41 billion a year ago. The average audience was 564,519, up from 338,500.
TV viewing was mixed but was still much larger than the smartphone viewing. TV’s cumulative audience, or reach, was 213.5 million people, or 87.9%. A year ago, reach was 210.3 million, or 87.6%. People consumed 516.8 million gross minutes of video, almost unchanged from 516.2 million a year ago. Average audience inched up to 51.3 million from 51.2 million.
Video viewing on PCs declined. Cumulative audience was 77.7 million, down from 86.3 million. But those folks watched more. Gross minutes viewed rose to 26.4 million from 22.1 million, while average audience rose to 2.6 million from 2.1 million.
