The US is “an entertainment-first society,” at least online, declares Comscore in a review [download page] of the Entertainment category in digital consumption. In fact, 97.5% of the US digital population accessed an Entertainment website or mobile app in December 2021, whether that be by consuming movies, music, or other form of entertainment.

As such, Entertainment emerges as the highest-reach category online in the US, ahead of Services (94.3% of the digital population), News/Information (94.1%), Social Media (91.9%), and Search/Navigation (90.4%).

Other notable high-reach categories online include Retail (89.8%), Financial Services (82.3%), Games (81.3%), Health (80.4%) and Travel (74.1%), with categories such as B2B (58.1%), Automotive (57.2%), Real Estate (56.9%), Education (54.2%) and Career Services and Development (42.5%) further back.

Beyond being the highest-reach category online, Entertainment also hogs the largest share of the US digital population’s time online, at 28.9%. That’s far ahead of the next-largest categories in terms of minute share: Services (17.4%); Social Media (16.7%); and Games (10.2%). In other words, people spend more than one-quarter of their time online with Entertainment apps and sites, while spending about a sixth of their time with Social Media, and about a tenth with Games.

Entertainment’s share of online time is growing, too, rising from 24% in December 2018 to almost 29% in December 2021.

YouTube’s Large Role

Online video is “by far the largest [in terms of audience size] compared with other forms of entertainment – like music,” notes Comscore. Advertisers have clearly taken note, with ad spend on online video rising quickly in the US and occupying 1 in every $5 spent on digital ads last year.

Online video’s wide reach is due in large part to YouTube: YouTube’s mobile app has the largest audience size in the Entertainment category, reaching 61% of the US digital population. Online music and podcasts also feature prominently, including Spotify, which reaches almost half (46%) of the digital population.

During December 2021, visitors spent about half an hour (31 minutes) per day on YouTube’s mobile app. However, with people often streaming music while going about their daily business, Spotify outranked YouTube in minutes per visitor, averaging almost 39 per day during the month.

How much Entertainment people are consuming is largely dependent on age. Although almost all adults across age groups consume Entertainment content, 18-24-year-old visitors to Entertainment sites and apps spent 84 hours on them during the month, almost 6 times the amount of time spent by visitors ages 65 and older (15 hours).

Focusing in on YouTube Entertainment sites, an analysis of channel viewing indicates that Music channels accounted for 38% of minutes for adults ages 18-34, and a larger 41% of minutes spent for those ages 35 and older.

For more details, download the presentation here.

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