At MWW, we recently took a look at what words, images and situations are most closely associated with watching movies and TVs on smartphone and tablets. We found both notable differences in how people associate video entertainment with smartphones vs. tablets that illustrate that marketing mobile video is not as simply as focusing on mobile itself. You can find the full report on watching video on smartphones vs. tablets here.
The chart below shows how images and words associated with watching video on tablets include home, bed, couch, night and with mobile scenarios being centered around travel topics, as travel has longer wait and down times. Not suprisingly, smartphones are almst 100% on the go devices where watching video is associating with waiting rooms, lines, working, car – situations generally associated with being on the go. 
In both cases they are maximizing downtime but in the case of tablets it is longer periods of relaxing downtimes while with smartphones video is used during short snippets of downtime while you are on the go (such as waiting in a line).
The types of video watched match up to these scenarios with tablets being associated with longer form movies and TV shows and smartphones more closely associated with shorter forms such as YouTube videos scaling up to TV shows (but not the longest form – movies).
Having kids then drives a third scenario strongest associated with watching video on both tablets and smartphones – mobile video as a distraction. Three out of four parents that watch video on a tablet also download video for their children with over half doing so frequently. 60% of parents who watch video on a smartphone also download video for their children.
Where and why do people watch video on smartphone vs. tablets
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[...] Digital Content Ephraim Cohen posted important insights on mobile marketing over on his own blog that I wanted to share with you here. If you thought consumers viewed video in the same way on [...]
[...] We used these results to work with our VP of Research and Insights, Doug O’Reilly, to develop our latest MWW white paper. The whitepaper offers insight into notable differences in how people associate video entertainment with smartphones vs. tablets and illustrates that marketing mobile video is not as simple as focusing on mobile itself, it’s about focusing on right situation for the right device at the right time – that makes it more relevant. You can read a summary here. [...]