Walk into nearly any bar, gym, airport or office these days and you’re likely not only to find a television, but also viewers of all sorts with their eyes glued to the glass—from sports fans urging their teams on during a big game to money men tracking the financial markets to travelers monitoring news and weather reports. These consumers, out of the confines of their homes, are no less important to networks and advertisers when they’re out and about.
But it’s not enough to simply see people watching content away from their homes. Marketers need to know what they’re watching.
To dig into out-of-home (OOH) viewing, Nielsen analyzed data to see what content Americans are consuming beyond the comfort of their own couches. The analysis, which looked into total day out-of-home TV viewership from the beginning of 2017 to the end of May, uncovered a bevy of trends—some intuitive, and some surprising—that begin to scratch the surface of this new horizon in measured behavior. Of course, out-of-home viewing trends can differ based on the time of day or day of the week; however, these trends across the total day yield intriguing insights as well.
