Video-on-demand users tend to be younger, more affluent and more likely to have kids than the overall television audience, Nielsen said in a new report.
The most popular VOD selection is a feature-length movie: 52 of the top 100 programs viewed on demand by people in the 18-34 age range were feature films, Nielsen said, citing internal data that includes only primetime programs encoded for measurement.
The other top VOD genres for the 18-34 demo were general dramas (26%) and general documentaries (8%). Among persons 50 and older, the breakdown was 42% selecting feature films, 34% picking general dramas and 6% opting for general documentaries.
Nielsen, in its Cross-Platform Report for the second quarter of 2013, released today, highlighted VOD and generalized time-shifted viewing.
The researcher said VOD-enabled set-tops are in about 60% of TV households, up from 37% in 2008. It said the category is growing in popularity as more recently telecast show episodes have become available (partly because viewing of ads in the three-day window after a show airs are being measured) and as multichannel providers have made VOD shows easier to find and order.
Video-on-demand users are more likely to be in the 18-34 age range (31%) than the overall TV audience (17%). They are more likely to have household income of at least $100,000 (31% vs. 21% overall). And 54% of VOD users have kids, vs. 40% of the overall TV audience. Only 46% have no kids, compared with 60% of the overall TV universe, Nielsen said.
People who engage in time-shifted viewing overall, including DVR playbacks, are far less likely to be watching a full-length movie than VOD users: only three of the top 100 time-shifted programs overall were feature films, vs. 52 for VOD viewers. The top category of time-shifted viewing is general drama: 40% in the 18-34 age range and 51% in the 50-and-over demographic.
