Television And Radio Has Strong Reach Among US Audiences

Even in the age of all sorts of media, consumers are still tuning into their televisions and radios: Live and time-shifted television programming reached 88 percent of people in the first quarter, while radio reached 92 percent of people.

At the same time, however, American consumers are also tuning into internet-connected devices, subscription on demand services and smart speakers. Here is how different media lines up in terms of audiences in the first quarter, according to a new report from Nielsen.

Live and time-shifted TV has a weekly reach of 88 percent among users ages 18 and over in the U.S.  Samba TV, for example, pays hardware manufacturers to put tracking software into their TV sets so that Samba can craft targeted ads based on viewing habits. That trend fits into the emerging ecosystem of contextual commerce.

Radio has a weekly reach of 92 percent among users ages 18 and over in the U.S. Connected cars could be in radio’s future. Satellite radio broadcasting company SiriusXM, for example, announced the acquisition of consumer and enterprise connected vehicle services company Automatic in 2017. Automatic makes connected-car OBD-II ports, adapters and related apps for iOS and Android.

Internet connected devices have a weekly reach of 35 percent among users ages 18 and over in the U.S. Brita, for example, teamed up with Amazon Dash to create the Brita Infinity, which automatically orders a new $6 filter as soon as it detects that the old filter has outlived its usefulness.

Adults ages 18 and over spent an average of 45 minutes per day on social networking platforms. Facebook, for example, has more than 2.2 billion monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide. And, according to an analysis by TheNextWeb, as of the end of March there were 3.3 billion people around the globe using social media.

More than 7 in 10 — or 72 percent — of adults ages 18 to 34 consumed video content on their smartphones at least once per day. Yeay, for example, uses its video platform to list items for buying and selling. It just announced its $4.9 million round of seed funding led by German VC Grazia Equity and Mountain Partners.

And a little more than 4 in 10 — or 43 percent – of consumers use audio streaming devices. In fact, 2017 marked the first year that on-demand audio accounted for the majority of music listening, according to reports. Overall consumption of on-demand streaming of albums, songs and audio grew 12.5 percent year over year.

Virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPD) reached 2.7 percent of U.S. households in March. Sling TV, Hulu Live TV, YouTube TV and other streaming services, for example, offer “skinny bundles” of channels that are popularly purchased together.

Close to two thirds — or 64 percent — of households had access to subscription video on demand (SVOD) services such as Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime in March. Netflix, in fact, added 5.2 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2018. (Still, that figure was about 1 million below its 6.2 million forecast.)

And about 2 in 10 — or 19 percent — of households use smart speakers. Smart speaker users can be loyal customers: Amazon Echo owners are among the eCommerce giant’s most loyal customers. Research from equity securities research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, for example, has noted that owners of Amazon’s Echo smart speakers spend $1,700 on average each year on Amazon.

Internet-enabled TV-connected devices such as Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV are present in 67 percent of households. Voice assistants are coming to TV-connected devices, too. Amazon is rolling out the Amazon Fire TV Cube. The device allows consumers to use voice to play, pause and resume video content using the company’s voice assistant, Amazon said in an announcement.