Watching a lot of video these days? You’re not alone.
Adults in the U.S. will spend an average of 5 hours, 31 minutes taking in video every day this year, according to new figures from eMarketer.
Digital video viewing across devices is driving the surge. Consider that — way back in 2011 — the time people spent watching video on digital devices was just 21 minutes daily. In 2015, US adults will spend an average of 1 hour and 16 minutes each day with video on their devices.
Then there’s the average time U.S. adults spend watching video programming on televisions: 4 hours, 35 minutes in 2011 and declining to 4 hours, 15 minutes in 2015.
Obviously, the video intake is lowering for TV and increasing on digital devices of all kinds.
“The increase in overall screen time highlights the complexity of today’s media ecosystem,” said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer. “While so much debate has centered on a supposed tug-of-war between TV and digital video, the reality is that digital video is growing not at the expense of TV, but because video content is more popular than ever. We might spend less time watching on the main screen, but we’re no less interested in TV programming, and in fact, we seek out more of it every year.”
From the “no surprise” department: while video is seeing gains on all digital devices, desktops and laptops will remain flat.
“The drop in TV time hasn’t stopped marketers from pouring significant amounts of money into television advertising,” notes eMarketer. “In 2015, 40.2 percent of U.S. major media ad spending will go to TV, totaling $70.59 billion, compared with TV’s 36.4 percent of time spent with media daily.”
Where’s the money going?
“U.S. advertisers will allocate just 4.4 percent of all spending, or $7.77 billion, to digital video ads, even though consumers are now spending nearly 11 percent of their media time watching video on digital devices,” according to eMarketer analysts.