TV Network

What kind of social behaviors do local media fans exhibit on Facebook and Twitter? It depends on the medium, says TVB [pdf] in a study conducted in conjunction with Colligent, that combines Nielsen Media Research and Kantar Media data with social media behaviors. The "Cultural Currency" study analyzes the social media behaviors of 167 million Facebook and Twitter users across a range of legacy media, finding that overall, local broadcast TV viewers tend to be most heavily engaged socially with their stations. For advertisers, understanding how social behaviors vary among fans of various local media is an important consideration when crafting social calls to action to accompany their local media buys. Read more »

Customer satisfaction with pay TV providers remains relatively low, although it has increased slightly after remaining flat for 3 consecutive years, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The index for subscription TV services rose a couple of points from last year's 66 to 68 on ASCI's 100-point scale. By comparison, satisfaction with cell phone manufacturers stands at 76, fixed line phone service providers are at 74, and wireless phone service providers are at 72. Among the information sector categories, only Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a lower score than pay TV services this year, debuting on the index at a score of just 65. Read more »

Americans might be listening to more radio, but radio's advertising revenues aren't going anywhere, at least for the time being. In Q1, total expenditures were flat, at $3.5 billion, according to [pdf] the latest revenue report from the Radio Advertising Bureau, which excludes network radio data due to incomplete information. Healthy growth in digital (9%) and off-air (5%) helped offset a sluggish quarter for spot, which was down 2% from Q1 2012. While remaining the smallest segment, at $179 million in revenues, digital's growth means that it now exceeds 5% share of total radio revenues. Read more »

An average of just 44% of viewing of full-length TV shows is live, according to [download page] respondents to a study from Vubiquity. However, the survey was limited to consumers with access to video-on-demand services from a cable/telco/satellite provider, meaning that it may not be representative of the entire TV viewing population. (Previous research from Nielsen indicates that around 90% of broadcast and cable primetime viewing is live.) Still, the results suggest that live TV viewing is falling victim to alternative sources of content: respondents to the Vubiquity study indicate that 22% of their viewing of full-length TV shows is from a DVR, 14% is on demand, and 6% is via an online source, among others. Read more »

Online video attracts a significant audience, with 1 in 5 or more American adults watching a TV show online (23%), user-generated content (UGC - 31%), or originally produced online video (OPOV - 19%) on at least a monthly basis, per results from an IAB study [pdf] conducted by GfK. But who are these viewers? The study profiles the audience of each online video type, finding that they each skew male, but more so among OPOV viewers. Viewers of original online content also skew older than those who watch TV shows online. Read more »

The IAB has released a new research report [pdf], conducted by GfK, in conjunction with the 2013-2014 NewFronts event. As part of the study, the researchers reveal that among monthly users, network TV shows online ("TV Online") has the same "wantedness" score as sports on regular TV, and also rivals regular primetime TV, meaning that these viewers attach a similar importance to online and regular TV content. But what motivates viewing of different streaming video types? Read more »

A new study from GfK has found that network content streaming now tends to cannibalize regular TV viewership of those programs, but does it have an effect on pay TV subscriptions? In other words, is the availability of network programs online contributing to cord-cutting and/or cord-slicing? According to separate results from the GfK survey, the answer is probably no. That is, 19% of streamers and downloaders in 2012 reported decreasing service ("cord-slicing") in the past year, as opposed to 10% who reported increasing service ("cord-splicing"). But, those numbers are not significantly different from the general population. Read more »

An online survey of 5,000 US adults, conducted by Nielsen on behalf of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), reveals that respondents rate newspapers (in print and on the internet) as the most effective advertising source among various media. The study measured advertising effectiveness across various metrics, with print newspapers coming out on top overall, ahead of radio, internet, and TV. Breaking the media types down into different segments, the local paper topped the ratings for likelihood to purchase and propensity to notice ads. Read more »

It's becoming somewhat repetitive to use the words "online ad revenues" and "record" in the same sentence. Yet once again, online ad spend has reached a new peak, hitting $10.31 billion in Q4, up 14.9% year-over-year, according to [pdf] the latest revenue report from the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers. That bests the previous peak for a quarter, set in Q3, which itself came after a record for first-half revenues. So it doesn't require tremendous powers of deduction to determine that full-year spending on internet advertising reached another high in 2012, growing by 15.2% to hit $36.57 billion. Read more »

34% of US internet users (and 30% of all consumers aged 13-54) surveyed in December 2012 reported having watched streaming video content that originated from a network since the beginning of September, a figure relatively on par with earlier years (32-37% between 2008 and 2011), per results from a GfK survey. What has changed over the past few years, though, is the self-reported effect of that streaming behavior. Whereas from 2006 to 2008, a greater proportion of streamers said that they watched regular TV programs more often rather than less, that net "benefit" became neutral between 2009 and 2011, before turning negative last year. Read more »