What Are You Streaming?
I love binge-watching shows. I was hooked, like a drug, with “Breaking Bad,” “The Wire” and “Game of Thrones.” Now, my favorites are “Bosch,” “True Detective,” “Broadchurch” and the “Imposters.” Just started “Fargo” and love it. I’m sure you see a trend.
All this streaming made me wonder about what is happening outside my house and the TV glow. Thanks to the updated Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, we have a glimpse inside U.S. homes and devices.
Here are a couple of highlights from the report, but I encourage you to download it and review all the data.
- Weekly streaming increased from 81 minutes last year to 143 minutes this year.
- Time spent with traditional TV dropped 30 minutes to 3 hours and 43 minutes. Some of this is because of a shortage of new programs, live sports and live programming such as late-night TV.
- Adults spent more than twice as much time each week watching video on smartphones and tablets. Younger people spent a majority of time watching on a cell phone. (College recruiters need to keep this in mind when producing videos. Words on a screen are very small unless they fill the entire screen.)
- 18-34-year-olds and older Americans spend about the same amount of time streaming.
The one thing you can take away from this all is that OTT advertising (over-the-top advertising on streaming services) is making more and more sense in this streaming world.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.