• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, January 12, 2016

According to Nielsen’s third-quarter Total Audience Report, focused on media habits in different economic strata, people with higher-incomes tend to have more access to tech advancements at their collective fingertips, be it that trendy new tablet or a streaming service with a much-ballyhooed program. Consumers that make less money actually spend more time with the media they spent their hard-earned money on.

The study, looking at 10 different devices/services, found that penetration followed the same pattern in every instance: homes with higher incomes had more devices/services. In August 2015, 38% of adults in homes with an income of less than $25,000 per year had access to a video game console. In that same period, 58% of adults in homes making more than $75,000 boasted a console. This trend played out even further among emerging services and technologies, such as tablets, smart TVs and streaming services.

However, says the report, just because a home has access to a device or service, doesn’t necessarily mean the homes’ denizens are using them. The study found that adult users in lower-income households that actually have these devices or services have greater usage, among both traditional and emerging media!

Glenn Enoch, SVP Audience Insights, Nielsen, said “… we did not anticipate that low-income consumers of all devices had greater usage… media behavior of low-income adults… concentrated in fewer devices… results in more minutes of usage for the devices (owned)… (while) high-income adults distribute their time among more devices… ”

The report also considered how the economics of connecting with media played out over multicultural lines, and found that money is a great equalizer. Adults in each income group have the same pattern of ownership of devices/services regardless of race or ethnicity and usage plays out in a similar manner for all income levels.

The most interesting finding on the usage side, says the report, is that users in lower-income households spend more time with every device that they use than high-income households. This is true not just of traditional devices, but of newer ones as well.

When looking at adult users of multimedia devices, black homes making under $50,000 averaged more than 33 monthly hours in the third quarter of 2015, Hispanic homes notched about 27 hours, and Asian-American homes had about 41 hours. In homes of these same ethnicities that made over $50,000, the monthly time spent with multimedia devices shrinks to 20 hours (black), nearly 19 hours (Hispanic) and 25 hours (Asian-American).

Knowing the trends in not just ownership, but how different economic levels of all U.S. consumers utilize and access the many devices they have at their fingertips helps provide a new line of sight to programmers and marketers looking to reach a multitude of viewers, concludes the report.

The Nielsen total audience report dated 12/10/15 may be found here for additional information.