Videogames

Netflix is by far the most popular application used on connected TVs, according to new figures from The NPD Group. 40% of connected TVs (either through the TV or through another device) are streaming content from Netflix, compared to just 17% used to watch video on YouTube, and 11% to watch Hulu or Hulu Plus. The research also indicates that among home entertainment devices, internet capable TVs are least likely to be connected and used for online features. Read more »

50% of tablet owners played a video game on their device in the past 30 days, according to [pdf] new data released by GfK MRI iPanel. While tablet owners use a variety of devices to play games, they're most likely to use their tablets, with cells or smartphones (43%), desktops (33%), laptops (32%), and video game consoles (31%) following in recent usage. These device owners feel less of a pull to playing games on MP3 players (12%) and handheld gaming devices (11%), though. Read more »

Smartphone penetration is rising quickly among teen (12-17) households, reports Nielsen in a new release. Between Q4 2011 and Q4 2012, smartphone penetration increased by 45% in these homes, compared to 32% among households with adults aged 18-24, and 22% among those with adults aged 25-34. But smartphone penetration still lags among households with teens, while the opposite is true when it comes to tablet ownership. 27% of teen TV homes owned a tablet in Q4, compared to 20% of households with 18-24-year-olds and 24% with 25-34-year-olds. Read more »

About half of consumers often (18.2%) or sometimes (33%) pay attention to online ads, according to results from an online survey by Aisle A. But the environment they're in has a significant impact on their awareness and receptiveness to ads. Respondents were far more likely to say they notice (54.5%) and are receptive (56.8%) to ads when they're on a shopping site than on a social media site (21.8% and 17.8%, respectively), for example. Awareness and receptiveness to ads also runs high on email sites, but very low on video and gaming sites. Read more »

Android and iOS smartphone and tablet users spend an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on their devices, according to new data from Flurry. These consumers appear to significantly favor applications over the mobile web: 80% of their consumption (or 2 hours and 7 minutes daily) is spent inside apps, per the report, while the remaining 20% (31 minutes) is devoted to the mobile web. That means that time spent with Facebook (18% share) rivals time spent with the entire mobile Web. Read more »

An analysis of the top 200 smart device models in Flurry's system, which represents more than 80% of all usage, reveals that while small (5%) and full-size (13%) tablets accounted for less than 20% of active smart device users around the world, they represented 29% of time spent playing gaming applications on such devices in February 2013. Surprisingly, though, Flurry's study finds that share of time spent in book and video apps is far smaller on these tablets (10% and 8% share, respectively), actually under-indexing their share of smart device users. Read more »

64% of Americans rank watching TV (on any device) as one of their top-3 media activities, down from a high of 71% in 2009 and 2010 but enough to keep TV viewing as America's favorite media activity, according to Deloitte. TV is tops for all generations except trailing Millennials (14-23), who prefer personal and social use of the internet as well as listening to music. The survey also reveals that for many trailing and leading (24-29) Millennials, videogames are not only a top activity, but an important advertising influence. Read more »

Americans still use their game consoles mostly for playing video games, but video on-demand (VOD) and streaming services are capturing more of console usage time, per new data from Nielsen. VOD and streaming services accounted for 22% of overall time spent with 7th-generation consoles (such as PlayStation3, Wii, Xbox 360) last year, up from 19% in 2011 and 13% in 2010. In fact Wii users devoted 32% of their time to VOD and streaming. Read more »

16% of advertisers on the Millennial Media platform integrated mobile commerce experiences into their campaigns last year, according to the network's year-in-review report [download page] released this morning. In the campaign action mix, m-commerce was offered as a post-click option less than social media (18%), store locator/view map (21%), and application download (37%), among others, per the report. Read more »

Social and mobile gaming ads generate an average click-through rate (CTR) of 3%, reveals MediaBrix [pdf] in a new study. That's far higher than the 0.1% average for standard banner ads (per MediaMind), and various other benchmarks cited in the study supplied by outside sources, including mobile banner ads (0.86%) and Facebook ads (0.11%). Moreover, CTR for social and mobile gaming value exchange ads - where users receive a reward for viewing the full ad - generate an average CTR of 11%. Read more »