As Nielsen prepares to add smart TV and over-the-top video viewing to its ratings system this fall, the service on Monday (June 10) revealed some key information about how people are spending their video time and using their smart phones and tablets to consume video.

Adding smart TV and over-the-top video viewing to the service’s national People Meter sample is expected to help Nielsen provide a more accurate picture of whom and how many are watching TV, thus better serving both advertisers and consumers.

Nielsen’s report confirms that all of the new ways to consume television is only serving to expand our consumption of the medium, especially among African-Americans, who also are watching more mobile and digital video, according to the report.

Time spent watching live TV hasn’t actually changed that much since 2009, when people spent an average of 4 hours and 47 minutes per day watching live TV. Four years ago, they also spent 16 minutes per day watching content played back on their digital video recorders, 11 minutes on video games and 18 minutes watching DVDs.

Today, people only watch an average of eight minutes less of live TV than they did four years ago: four hours and 39 minutes. They spend significantly more time watching content on their DVRs – 26 minutes, while 13 minutes is spent on video games and 11 minutes on DVDs.

African-Americans by far watch the most television, spending an average of 47 hours per week watching TV, as compared to the 34 hours spent by the population at large, 28 hours watched by Latinos and nearly 20 hours by Asian Americans.

Browsing the Internet on a computer comes in a distant second to TV watching, with adults 25-34 and 35-49 both spending nearly seven hours per week online. Adults 50-64 spend six hours per week online on their computers, while younger adults 18-24 spend five and a half hours.

Conversely, young adults spend the most time watching video on the Internet and on mobile devices. Adults 18-24 watch the most Internet video at more than two hours per week. Adults 25-34 average the second most amount of time spent, at nearly two hours per week, while adults 35-49 and African Americans both spend more than an hour per week watching video online.

Time spent watching video on a mobile device is still fairly insignificant, with teens and young 18-24 watching the most video on their phones at 25 and 27 minutes per week, respectively. Older adults barely engage in that behavior, with adults 50-64 watching four minutes per week and adults over 65 watching one minute per week, probably when their grandchildren force them to watch the latest cat-on-a-skateboard video.

Women tend to spend more time on their smart phones and tablets, with women spending 28 hours per week using mobile apps and men spending almost 26 hours per week. Nearly 90%of smart phone users’ online time is spent using apps, as opposed to 13% spent on the mobile Web.

Similarly, women spent 15 hours per week using the mobile apps on their iPads, as opposed to men’s more than 12 hours per week. iPad users spend more time on the mobile Web – 24%—than smart phone users do.

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