Social Media, Mobile And YouTube Changing The Nature Of “TV”

A trio of reports sheds new light and visibility on how TV and digital video viewing habits are changing with social media in the multi-platform era. Viewing habits are shifting dramatically in large part because of on-demand viewing and the availability of programming across screens.

According to the Ooyala Global Video Index (for Q4 2013), based on behaviors observed across its network of video publishers, smartphones and tablets are grabbing a larger share of video viewing time. The report looked video consumption on connected TVs, video on PCs, tablets and smartphones.

While there are a number of subtle findings, the big takeaways are that people are watching more video on mobile devices and that their video consumption on those devices is increasingly “long form” (over 30 minutes per session):

• Mobile and tablets combined for over 26 percent of video viewing time in December 2013
• 53 percent of mobile viewing time involved video content longer than 30 minutes

Next the Council for Research Excellence (CRE) released a study about socially connected TV viewing. The study found that 16 percent of primetime TV viewing involved some sort of real-time engagement with social media. Further, “during nearly half of these occasions (7.3 percent of primetime TV viewing instances), the viewer is engaging with social media specifically about the show being viewed.”

Socially connected TV viewing was highest for new programs. Facebook and Twitter were the two primary social networks involved in real-time socially connected TV interactions.

One might consider 16 percent to be a surprisingly small percentage of people engaged with social media during viewing. Indeed, an earlier Nielsen study — Nielsen was also involved in the CRE research — reported that “84 percent of smartphone and tablet owners say they use their devices as second-screens while watching TV at the same time.”

While social media and mobile device usage are not the same thing, this fairly massive discrepancy in findings is very curious.

Finally a new report issued by Google finds that YouTube and search are increasingly tied in with TV content and fan engagement. Users and fans are searching Google for TV-show related content and voraciously consuming trailers and previews on YouTube.

Google also explains that show fans are creating and engaging with show related and additional content outside of the TV episodes themselves. These include behind-the-scenes clips and interviews as well as parodies and fan-created content.

People are also using YouTube to catch up on shows (or parts of shows) they missed. Sunday appears to be the most popular to stream and watch shows missed during their original broadcasts, according to Google.

The full Google report is embedded below.