Digital Home Thoughts: Video on iPods Not As Popular As You Might Think

"Nielsen Media Research has begun gathering its first data on the audience for Apple's iPod, calling into question the popularity of its video offering. Owners of Apple's ubiquitous portable media device spend far more time on it listening to music or audio podcasts than they do using it to watch TV or movies. That was among the findings in an unprecedented preliminary study conducted by the audience-measurement service in October -- about one year after a video window was introduced to iPod and its corresponding Internet platform, iTunes...Among the findings: Less than 1% of content items played by iPod users on either iTunes or the device itself were videos. Among video iPod users, that percentage barely improves, up to 2.2%. Even measured by duration of consumption, where 30- or 60-minute TV shows might seem to have a built-in advantage over three-minute songs, video comprises just 2% of total time spent using iPods or iTunes among iPod owners. Video iPod users consume video 11% of the time."

An interesting study - I would have thought that with all that iTunes video content out there, a higher percentage of people would be using it (though I wasn't expecting a huge number). Guess not - so what's the barrier? Is it screen size, not enough content, or just that people aren't in scenarios often enough where mobile video is possible? I personally believe it's the latter: audio is a passive/multi-tasking experience, while video requires your attention (with rare exception). People are simply in scenarios less often where they can watch a screen and focus 100% of their time on it.

I think it would have been interesting if they cross-referenced this survey with questions about when they do watch video content - as in, on vacation, travelling for business, on weekends, etc. I know that in an average week I watch zero mobile video, but when I travel for business or pleasure, mobile video is a very common scenario. I'm preparing for a trip to Hawaii now and am synching over about 20 TV shows...not to my Zune though, the stupid thing won't support DVR-MS conversion (yes, that will be in the next part of my review, if I can ever get it finished).