Video Still Minor Part Of iPod Use
Nov 20th, 2006 | By James Lewin | Category: Digital Music, Digital Video Downloads, General, iPods & Portable Media PlayersNielsen Media Research has begun gathering information on usage of Apple’s iPod, and has found that most iPod owners spend far more time on it listening to music or audio podcasts than they do using it to watch TV or movies.
Nielsen monitored a panel of 400 iPod users in the U.S. from Oct. 1-27 as part of its new initiative, Anywhere Anytime Media Measurement, or A2M2, which aims to measure audiences on myriad emerging digital platforms. They found that less than 1% of content items played by iPod users on either iTunes or the device itself were videos.
Among video iPod users, that percentage barely improves, up to 2.2%. According to the firm, video comprises just 2% of total time spent using iPods or iTunes among iPod owners. Video iPod users consume video 11% of the time.
The study also found that 15.8% of iPod users have played a video on either iPod or iTunes. About one-third of that group doesn’t own a video iPod.
I spoke with Neilsen executives at the NAB in San Diego a couple of month ago and you cannot trust them with these type results. Their tracking software is pathetic and I quote, “we only track netowrk television shows” on IPODS. One of the executives would not even recognize that original programming exists outside of affiliate distributed shows like LOST and The Office. The Podcast and mobile community should not buy into Nielsens garbage ratings. Rather we should look at organizations like Feedburner which track results on IPOD related audio and video programming.
Jason
Great feedback – I agree that every poll has to be understood within its own context of who was polled and who did the polling.
That said – I wonder what the ultimate numbers on this might be, given a few more years of adoption. I can’t imagine most users viewing video content on portable media players more than 20-30 minutes a day, because use would be limited mainly to time when you’re not at home, not driving and not working.
Neilsen is infamous for bad polling and statistical variance. Just with the limited info given in the article you can tell they tracked 400 iPod users in general (all 5 generations) and then extracted video watching statistics. Exactlly how are you suppose to get accurate ipod video watching habits when 4/5ths of your sample is incapable of watching video on their iPods?
And if Jason is correct and they were tracking only Network television watched on the ipod that throws the whole thing out the window. I’m one of the most obsessive iPod video watcher I know of (hell, I probably watch over 8 or 9 hours of vidcasts a week) and I’ve maybe watched a network show once or twice in the year or so I’ve had my 5th gen.
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