Almost 13 percent of viewers tuning in to last week’s Olympic opening ceremonies were also surfing the web, according to preliminary data gathered from Nielsen’s single source panel of TV and Internet users. Nielsen found that this group of multitaskers averaged 32 minutes of simultaneous activity, per user.
The website of choice for opening ceremony viewers was Facebook. An estimated 41% of simultaneous users spent time on the social networking site. Google and Yahoo were the next two most popular sites, with 38% and 35% of simultaneous users visiting the sites, respectively.
| Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony Top 10 Domains by Simultaneous Usage | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| RANK | Domain | % of Simul Users | Simul Mins Per Prsn |
| 1 | facebook.com | 40.9% | 16.1 |
| 2 | google.com^ | 37.8% | 3.1 |
| 3 | yahoo.com^ | 35.4% | 6.9 |
| 4 | aol.com^ | 12.6% | 4.6 |
| 5 | msn.com^ | 12.6% | 2.3 |
| 6 | live.com^ | 8.7% | 5.0 |
| 7 | youtube.com^ | 8.7% | 14.3 |
| 8 | comcast.net^ | 7.9% | 4.9 |
| 9 | bing.com^ | 4.7% | 9.7 |
| 10 | go.com^ | 4.7% | 2.3 |
| Source: The Nielsen Company ^Small base sizes; for directional purposes only | |||
Facebook was also the destination where users spent the most time, surfing an average of 16 minutes on the site, more than any of the other top 10 web sites visited by web-surfing Olympic viewers last Friday. YouTube visitors placed second with an average of 14 minutes per simultaneous user.
Simultaneous use of TV and PC, particularly on sites such as Facebook and Google, demonstrates an opportunity for media companies to extend advertising engagement across screens as well as to enrich the overall viewer experience. Last week, an analysis found that 14% of Super Bowl viewers also spent time online during the game, at an average of 29 minutes per user. Nielsen expects to see this trend of simultaneous TV/internet usage continue its development through the Winter Olympics and during this summer’s FIFA World Cup Soccer event.