Often, when people discuss television viewing these days they’ll conclude their chat with something like “But we just don’t know what people are watching.” That is an increasingly outdated view of the data, however. On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Dierdre Thomas, the Chief Product Officer for Nielsen’s Audience Measurement business unit. We talked about the evolution of Nielsen’s business measuring market share, how the company captures what people are watching and where, and how overall viewing habits have changed in the streaming age.
We also discussed “The Gauge,” Nielsen’s overall look at the ways in which people are watching TV these days. Here’s May 2024’s Gauge, which shows just where things stand.
Like some of the posters, I watch a YouTube on my TV. I was surprised that Sonny and Deirdre were a little perplexed by this trend. YouTube has an amazing wealth of quality channels. Watching that content on my TV rather than my phone is far preferable.
Also of note: one of my kids has noted that he gets significantly more commercials when watching YouTube on the TV rather than his phone. He estimated about 1 ad per 6 minutes on his phone and 1 ad per 2 minutes on TV.
Google’s clearly aware of something.
I do watch a lot of Youtube videos on my TV with Roku. It's addictive!
As to the add supported options, I prefer less or no ads technically, but, the reason I am now using "free" just with ads sources is twofold. First of all, I just can't afford or justify any more fees, secondly while there are ads, they are a lot shorter and not as annoying...lol
Thank you for providing this information to us, Sonny. I was very interested. One question I have (a very basic one) is "how are Nielson families selected?" Also, are families rotated in and out, and added to the group?
I watch: 1. AppleTV (other streaming), 2. Hulu and 3. YouTube (podcasts and selected content)