Nielsen Says Facebook Got 53 Billion Minutes of Use In May.
What Does That Number Mean, Anyway?
Bill Niemeyer, Senior Analyst
September 16, 2011
This week Nielsen released The Social Media Report Q3 2011 (interesting report on social and worth a look). The report says U.S. Internet users spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May 2011, making it the number one web site. This factoid got a great deal of press attention, as Facebook is a popular subject and 53.5 billion is a pretty big number.
Relative to online video, TV and OTT, what does that number mean?
For an online video comparison, let's turn to comScore. According to its June 17 press release, Americans spent 168 billion minutes watching online video in May 2011. So online video use in May was slightly over 3X larger than Facebook use.
Or was it? Looking at the Nielsen social media report, it says in May 2011 social media and blogs were 22.5% of Americans' total Internet use and videos/movies were 4.4%. Nielsen reports that Facebook was the lion's share of social use (next was Blogger at 723 million minutes in May), so this report is saying that Facebook use is almost 5X larger than online video.
Or was it? Nielsen has its own online video measurement service and, according to its press release on May 2011 viewing, Americans spent 38 billion minutes viewing online video. So Facebook's use is 1.4X larger than online video.
If you are now confused completely, so am I. comScore says online video viewing is over 4X larger than the Nielsen video measurement service reports. And this Nielsen service says video viewing is over 3X larger than the Nielsen social media report says it is.
There are undoubtedly devils in the details on what each estimate includes and how they're done, but nominally they all purport to represent total online video use in the U.S.
Let's turn to TV. Nielsen is the primary source for data on U.S. TV viewing, as it has enjoyed an effective monopoly since Arbitron got out of the TV measurement business in 1992. (It should be noted there is now a building business in set-top box based data collection by companies including Kantar, Rentrak, TRA, and Nielsen itself).
According to the latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, during each month during Q1 2011, on average 288.5 million Americans watched 159 hours a month of TV. That is 2,752 billion minutes a month of total U.S. TV watching, or 51X larger than the Nielsen social media report's estimate of Facebook usage.
My first takeaway: refining and standardizing reporting of viewing across platforms is well overdue. Even within the online video space, the comScore vs. Nielsen (vs. Nielsen) differences highlight the challenge in that one market segment. As TV networks and publishers seek to monetize viewing across platforms including TVs, PCs, mobile, tablets and OTT devices, advertisers will demand consistent reporting on how much viewing is being done (and by who demographically).
My second takeaway: TV vs. Facebook use illustrates a "don't take your eyes off a big prize" situation. While the rise in use of social media—and its impact on both consumers and content businesses—is significant, we should not lose touch with Americans' affinity for spending a lot of time viewing the type of content they now find on TV. The hundreds of millions of OTT devices going into U.S. homes over the next few years will offer new ways for Americans to access and engage with TV-based video. The challenge for incumbents and new entrants alike is how to leverage the opportunity of the OTT platforms (as well as social media) with this established consumer video behavior.
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