The Games People Play: Nielsen Finds Reach, Frequency 'Quite Staggering'

IN A MOVE THAT IS likely to have significant implications for the way advertisers and media planners think about audience shares for traditional television dayparts, Nielsen Thursday released the first snapshot of a new measurement service tracking the burgeoning market of video game consoles, which finds much of the usage is taking place when people would normally be watching conventional TV programming. The report, "The State of the Console," finds that the penetration of video game consoles soared nearly 19% during the fourth quarter of 2006 and are now in more than 45.7 million homes account for 41.1% of TV households. The study suggests that while Madison Avenue has become transfixed by other digital media, especially online, DVRs, and personal media devices such as the iPod, video games already are having a profound impact on the way people spend time watching TV for a very simple reason: Most video game consoles are connected to the primary or secondary TV set in TV households, and they are used primarily during traditionally peak TV usage time periods - especially among some of the most important and elusive TV audience demographics.