High definition television, DVRs, and the Internet are creating higher quality and better experiences for consumers, leading to an increase in the amount of videos Americans watch, according to a new Nielsen Three Screen Report.

"Consumers are driven by the convenience and quality that today's technology now enables," said Matt O'Grady, Executive Vice President, Audience Measurement, Nielsen.

"New mobile devices and enhanced TV quality allow viewers to engage in more content than ever before."

More than half of U.S. TV households now have HDTV, up 189 percent from the first quarter of 2008, and more than one-third have DVRs, up 51 percent. High-speed broadband access, now in 63.5 percent of homes, has created a better user experience for watching online videos and nearly a quarter of households have smartphones, allowing people to "place shift" and watch video anywhere.

Despite the common perception that viewers of videos on mobile phones are mostly teens, more than half (55%) are adults aged 25-49. While mobile online video viewing is still fairly limited, year over year growth is notable at 51.2%.

TV is still the most popular screen of choice: viewers watched 2 more hours of TV per month in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period a year prior (158:25 vs. 156:24).  They are also continuing to simultaneously use the Internet while watching TV, with the average time spent doing both activities up 9.8% to 3 hours and 41 minutes.

AS of the first quarter of 2010 the 292 million people in the U.S. with TV spend on average 158 hours, 25 minutes each month watching te/> [...]

Fri Jun 11, 2010 12:30 pm

Twitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!

[Cue intro]

If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Star Trek Online." Well, according to ClickZ, its creator, Atari Inc., has decided to reach those that don’t quite go as far as greeting each other with "Live Long and Prosper," by launching a number of social media initiatives to promote the game.

YouTube, Facebook, and secret access codes on game sites, have all been part of Atari’s marketing efforts, but my favorite has to be its Twitter strategy:

For Twitter, the New York-based company has created a microsite-app combo, dubbed "Tweet in Klingon," that allows viewers to type English phrases and have them tweeted in fictional Klingon language.

And you thought Foursquare updates were annoying. Wait ’til people realize they can start tweeting in Klingon. Better yet, they start updating their Foursquare status in Klingon. Race ya to become the Mayor of Adigeon Prime!

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Thu Jan 21, 2010 11:10 am

For my closing keynote at New Marketing Experience in San Francisco, I gave them my “One Big Idea” speech, as this was the theme of the day. My big idea was blur.

Blur

We have too much to do. We have too much to sort through. There are too many shiny objects, too many me-too experiences, too many situations where we’re doing something because we think that’s what we should be doing, and because that’s what other people seem to be doing.

In this context, I was talking about marketing, but of course, as with everything I do, I’m talking about life, about how we’re conducting ourselves, about what’s on the plate.

Essentially, I gave people permission to stop chasing after every recipe and instead just work on their restaurant. Do something. You don’t have to do everything. Just do something.

Eliminate blur. Stop multitasking. Stop allowing everything in, if that’s not helping.

Ultimately, no one needed me to say this. I just did it to remind them to look inside, to question everything, to consider the frame through which they were viewing the world, and to consider whether there was too much stuff blurring up their view.

I’m starting to think that we’ve got the opportunity to do some REALLY big things by just working on a few things, and by chalking up some little victories.

What say you?