Age and Mobile Video - Thoughts on the Nielsen Three-Screen Report
I just read through Nielsen's Q1 2010 three-screen report (TV, computer, mobile) and while their conclusions weren't too surprising there was one thing that really stood out.
The most striking trend I saw was the impact of age on the result set. In a nutshell, the younger the viewer, the less video they watch across the board for all mediums, including PCs, except for mobile. There's an inverse relationship between age group and number of hours watched on mobile devices. So, for mobile viewing, the teen 12-17 group outpaced the 18-24 group which outpaced the 25-34 group and so on. As a matter of fact, for all of the screens, the teen group's data resembled the 65+ group more than it does the 18-24 group. Now that's funny.
This has to be great news for all the mobile video companies out there as their addressable market grows and gain earning/spending power, and ought to serve as further proof to the existing content providers that their future consumers want content everywhere, all the time.
One sidenote in all of this is that one has to infer that a significant number of the teen 12-17 group has video enabled smart phones which is an entirely different point and post.
There are also a couple of variables that weren't addressed: are teens watching mobile because they actually want to or because they have to? Could it be due to being out and about more, or being prohibited from watching TV at home or video on a PC?
Anyway, enjoy the numbers below and check out the Nielsen post and download the report
